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Complicated light source
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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by Warren on Wed Oct 11th at 5:54pm 2006

So I'm trying to create a very specific type of light that's going into my map. I need a long chain of connected light tubes that illuminate uniformly.



If you take a look at this picture, the tube-lights on the ceiling are exactly what I'm trying for.

So here's my dilemma. I'm going to have to create a custom texture because Source has nothing close to what I need - should I try using a .rad file with my texture, or maying using $selfillum and a chain of point lights?

If a long brush textured to my satisfaction can emit light smoothly and consistantly along the entire surface, I'd prefer that route if it's less expensive than a lot of point lights (which probably won't look right?)..

Any help is appreciated.




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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by Crono on Wed Oct 11th at 9:25pm 2006

You want texture lights, or a glowing texture:
The how to


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by fishy on Wed Oct 11th at 9:31pm 2006

a long func_illusionary brush, set to not render, and textured with 'white001', is better than point lights. it will give a softer, more even result. alter the brightness by changing the scale of the texture. the lower the scales, the brighter the light.

you don't see this in game, so you'd use it in conjuntion with a 'selfillum' texture for the apparent light source.




i eat paint



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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by Warren on Fri Oct 27th at 8:37pm 2006

Sorry, how do I proceed with getting a long func_illusionary brush?

I was thinking a brush and then tie to entity but that doesn't seem to be it.




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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by Campaignjunkie on Mon Oct 30th at 9:23pm 2006

Hmm? You don't have func_illusionary in your entity list?



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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by Warren on Tue Oct 31st at 4:25am 2006

? quote:
Hmm? You don't have func_illusionary in your entity list?




No sir. What shall I do?




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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by Campaignjunkie on Tue Oct 31st at 7:00am 2006

You can just use a func_brush set to "Never Solid" and "Don't Render" for the same effect, I guess.



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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by Warren on Thu Nov 2nd at 7:20pm 2006

Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:

I've been procrastinating on compiling my map and seeing the new lighting because it takes so long (cordoning wouldn't help), so I did a small little test map to see if this thing is going to work.

I've tried both a fun_illusionary and a func_brush through tie to entity, with your suggestions ie, Solidity set to Never Solid and Render Mode set to Dont Render, I've tried both letting them render and no results with any of them.

My point light was the only lighting the map got. The compile log reported there was only 1 direct light.



What am I doing wrong?




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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by omegaslayer on Thu Nov 2nd at 11:41pm 2006

The func_brush or illusionary needs to have the self luminating texture on it (lights/white001)



Posting And You



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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by Warren on Fri Nov 3rd at 1:46am 2006

They were both textured with lights/white001..




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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by Campaignjunkie on Fri Nov 3rd at 5:36am 2006

Four suggestions to try, in descending order of desperation:

1) Make sure VBSP isn't reporting any leaks and that you're running VVIS on the map as well. I believe texture lighting requires both of those.

2) Try the other lightswhite00x textures.

3) Edit the lights.rad in whatever mod you're mapping (for example, for HL2, go to half-life 2hl2lights.rad) in a text editor, maybe WordPad, and go to the line that reads lightswhite001. The four numbers after are the corresponding light settings for that texture. Try bumping up the fourth number to something like 1000 or 2000, just to make sure your texture lighting is working and that it's simply not because it's too dim to see.

4) Check the Kleiner lab VMF included with the SDK. Near the beginning in the basement brick area before the actual lab room, there is a boarded-up window with a white func_illusionary that uses this function. Copy and paste the setup into your map and adjust to your needs.



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 Re: Complicated light source
Posted by Warren on Fri Nov 10th at 9:04pm 2006

Sigh.. I'm getting extremely discouraged with this. Nothing works.

I've been trying to get it working in a test map which I have uploaded here.

I have 9 brushes tied to func_illusionary entities, each one of them textured with a different lights/whitex texture.

white, white001, white001_nochop, white002, white003, white003_nochop, white004, white004_nochop, white005.

I've tried texture scales of 0.01 and 2.0 just for the hell of it, and they don't work. They are all set up to Don't Render. I've had them tied to func_brush with Never Solid and Don't Render and that doesn't work.

lights.rad (only 32 bytes) opened with Notepad, Wordpad or Microsoft Word all show only one line:

xeno/crys_4b 255 160 128 40000

I've searched my entire 10.6 GB HL2 directory for all .vmf files and I see nothing that looks like the Kleiner lab.

*cries*





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