Please help me with lighting.

[Schmoe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Foolery

Will using a 60/45 outer/inner angles with 1500 brightness light the ceiling too? In real life light bounces off of everything, so a bright enough light pointing down will give you light on the ceiling too. Is this the case in the source engine? Will using shadow_control affect this at all?

The shadow_control entity is beyond my knowledge. I've typically seen ambient light based on bounces from the original light_spots to be fairly consistent with Valve maps. So... yes.

If you have a leak in your map then the lighting from bounces will be eliminated from the final rendering.

[Loc_n_lol]

You may want to tweak the vrad params to allow for more bounces, but it sounds like either your light_spots aren't strong enough in the first place, thus when they bounce back, it's barely visible, or you have no vis and so no bounces at all (which means pitch black ceilings).

[Sgt Frag]

I didn't read all posts.

Ambient lighting is the lighting that naturally 'bounces around everywhere'. So in your light entity the regular light comes from the sun and will cast shadows. The ambient is a 'fill light' that will brighten everything up, good for getting rid of black and really dark areas/shadows. If overdone could look bad.
That will help ceiling some.

Also place a regular light entity in the room. Give it's 50% distance something small (maybe 100-200 units). Make sure the yellow helper sphere around it doesn't touch any walls/floor or you get a 'hotspot' which makes it obvious there is an extra light there.
Give the 0% distance (distance at which it casts no light) a large number like 1500 or more. So the light will be bright inside the first sphere and fade out to 0 at the second.
If you have a large 0% distance the fade will be very gradual and natural. That'll help light the room and the ceiling without having a visibly noticable light source to player.


Colored lighting can have very moody and dramatic effects. However it is best if it's barely noticeable. More of a sub conciense thing. You don't want a bright blue room. But if the light has the slightest blue tint it will feel cold. If yellow if will feel warm...

[Tom Foolery]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrokenTripod

I hear people usually use a light_spotlight from the light source, then halfway between the floor and the ceiling, they put a light (just light) like, the 360 one.

This lights the rest of the room evenly and preserves the spot-ish area on the floor that the spotlight gives.

I thought about doing something like that, but I didn't try it because I figured it would look weird. I'll try it though, thanks.

[Tom Foolery]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sgt Frag

I didn't read all posts.

Ambient lighting is the lighting that naturally 'bounces around everywhere'. So in your light entity the regular light comes from the sun and will cast shadows. The ambient is a 'fill light' that will brighten everything up, good for getting rid of black and really dark areas/shadows. If overdone could look bad.
That will help ceiling some.

Also place a regular light entity in the room. Give it's 50% distance something small (maybe 100-200 units). Make sure the yellow helper sphere around it doesn't touch any walls/floor or you get a 'hotspot' which makes it obvious there is an extra light there.
Give the 0% distance (distance at which it casts no light) a large number like 1500 or more. So the light will be bright inside the first sphere and fade out to 0 at the second.
If you have a large 0% distance the fade will be very gradual and natural. That'll help light the room and the ceiling without having a visibly noticable light source to player.

Colored lighting can have very moody and dramatic effects. However it is best if it's barely noticeable. More of a sub conciense thing. You don't want a bright blue room. But if the light has the slightest blue tint it will feel cold. If yellow if will feel warm...

Thanks for the clarification on ambient light and all the tips. I'll try those out.

I'd actually read some about colored lighting. For example, the area in half life 2 where you are first following barney in city 17, the light goes from incandesent, to flourescent, and then to combine (very blue) to make the player uncomfortable.

Most lights in TF2 are white or warm, though, so I'll probably only use white lights until I gain more experience.

[Pink_Panther]

Here are some bits from another post i wrote, and I thought it may help you.
----

There is an older technique for lighting called texture lighting that is very effective. Basically make a brush that looks like a light source (a shop light, tube lights, whatever) and then on one side use a texture that looks like a light (type light into the name filter in hammer). When compiled, they will act as a light source using a light.rad file. (you can search for that on the net and learn about them)

Also, if your putting in lights before you texture it's ok. But, once you put textures in, the lighting effect will probably look totally different. Try texturing then adding in lights sparcely to allow for dim/darker areas then add a couple more here and there to control the darkness in spots that need to be lighted due to player movement and such.

Dont be set on thinking that every set distance has to have a light. Think of a house, is there a light in every corner? or is there one or two placed around in a natural location to get the most effect and light only the areas needed? Also, is every light in the house the same brightness? Is every light the same color(some bulbs are whiter and some are more yellow right)? Is every light source a bulb?

Lighting is easy to do, but extreamly hard to get right. The key is to allow it to be natural to the point that nobody really notices it. If its a smidge too bright or dark, wrong colors, too many lights or not enough, people will notice. When its natural, nobody will say a thing other than 'it looks nice/good' and they wont know why.

[Pink_Panther]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Foolery

Most lights in TF2 are white or warm, though, so I'll probably only use white lights until I gain more experience.

(saw this after i posted)

I recommend ignoring most maps out there. I have yet to see a valve map that I thought was even close to being lit correctly. They are ok, but may as well be full bright to me.

Here is an idea that makes playing around with colored lights sorta fun and you can learn a crapload in a couple hours. Make a couple simple rooms and take 2 different color lights. Pick 2 that should never go together like purple and yellow(or whatever) Find a way to place lights of those colors in the same room together so that it actually blends together and looks nice. Dont be afraid to think outside the normal light positions either. Put some low on walls, some high, whatever...just make it look good. To speed it up, try a couple different arrangements in different rooms then compile. When that works, try changing the textures so that each wall is something different and see how the textures effect the appearance without changing the lights.

another fun thing to try is playing with shadows. make a point light in the exact center of a smallish square room. change the lightmap size on each brush to like 2 or so. then make objects around the light and see how the shadows appear on each wall/floor/cieling. Then change/move around the brushs blocking the light to try and make designs with the shadows. This will help you understand how to control shadows and put them where you want them instead of accendental randomness.

Hope that helps.

[Schmoe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pink_Panther

Here is an idea that makes playing around with colored lights sorta fun and you can learn a crapload in a couple hours.

One thing to note is that TF2 maps are designed for playability. Using drastically cool/warm (e.g. blu/orange) lighting may affect the coloring of player models which would make it harder for folks to identify enemy's. RED will appear BLU in cool lighting and vice versa. To get a feel for how colored lights affect the player enable sv_cheats 1 and type "thirdperson" to see the player model (or drink some Bonk or taunt). To go back to first person, type "firstperson."