Ugly shadows with lower lightmap scales?

[The Siphon]

I tried lowering lightmap scale, no difference at all. Also I tried that lighting guide and did a compile with those commands but again no visible fix.

 

[Micnax]

Lowering it as in going from 16 to 8, or as in 16 to 24?

 

[The Siphon]

Lowering it as in going from 16 to 8, or as in 16 to 24?

from 16 to 8

 

[Werewolf]

Also I tried that lighting guide and did a compile with those commands

Which guide and which commands did you try?

 

[Tumby]

These 2 are caused by the fact that the amount of rays is limited. Make the doorway bigger and it's gonna be less notice. The truly best option you have is to compile vrad with -final.

The prop does not have a collision model, therefore a shrinkwrap of the entire model is used for lighting calculation. The fix here is to use -staticproppolys in vrad. See this for more information: http://www.nodraw.net/2010/12/lighting-compile-options/
Make sure the props properties allow these to take effect!

Sharp shadows will always look blocky. If you don't like that, try using a BIGGER lightmap size or increase the sun spread angle.

The following guide should also help you a little: https://tf2maps.net/threads/guide-lets-talk-about-lighting.19133/

EDIT: Fixed mistake where i wrote -full instead of -final. What was I thinking?

 

[The Siphon]

Which guide and which commands did you try?

http://www.nodraw.net/2010/12/lighting-compile-options/
This thing, there was no difference between compiling with this guide and doing a normal compile.

 

[Tumby]

You must be using the commands incorrectly. Please provide screenshots of your compile window before pressing start.

 

[Blade x64]

Use -final in vrad.

-final
Increases the quality of light_environment and indirect lighting by spending more time firing rays.

 

[The Siphon]

You must be using the commands incorrectly. Please provide screenshots of your compile window before pressing start.

Also there is no way I could get a bigger doorway

 

[Tumby]

Why are you running vrad multiple times? You need to use all these commands on a single vrad.

 

[The Siphon]

Why are you running vrad multiple times? You need to use all these commands on a single vrad.

I tried following the guide on the site, which instructed to create a new compile preset. Neither of them work, so I tried using both in case I somehow messed them up.

 

[Pocket]

Running VRAD multiple times just overwrites the previous results; it's not like you can try it three different ways and then cycle between the results when you load up the game.

 

[Blade x64]

These settings amuse me.

So it starts out normally: (1)builds the bsp, (2)calculates visibility, (3)generates final lighting for ldr, then hdr, (4)copies the bsp into your game directory, and (5) launches the game.

But then it keeps going. (6) It redoes the ldr lighting with proper prop lighting. (7) It throws the ldr data out again, generating it with a custom lights file. This bsp doesn't even get copied into the game directory, and will get overwritten next time you compile.

Just put all the vrad arguments in the same one and only run that one. Also be sure it copies after the compile.