Lighting and Distances

My Light_Enviroment casts no shadows. What is the setting to fix this?

What is the maximum Max_Viewable_Distance? I know there is a maximum.

Ok first off, this could be complicated if you are new to mapping.

First, make sure you have no leaks in your level.  If you do, then there wont be any shadows and your level will be fully lit.

Second, in the env_light entity, make sure your light is pointed to the ground.  If it is pointed up, then you will not get any shadows.

The Max_Viewable_Distance proprety has nothing to do with it.  This value indicates how many units the player can see.  The default number I believe is 4086.  That means that brushes futher away will not be visible.

Check to see if your map either has a leak or that your light is pointed to the ground.

It should probably also be mentioned how to add pitch to the light, so that it is not pointed straight down (which, with certain architecture, could appear as shadowless) Set the angle for the light_environment (not an env_light!) not as straight down but as one of the compass directions. Now, give it a pitch which is a negative number between 0 and -90. It needs to be negative so that it points down instead of up. -90 would be straight down. I think anything between -45 and -75 can get some nice shadows. Any lower than -45 and your shadows will probably be a bit too long looking.

As for max viewable distance, setting it unfortunately does not affect rendering time, even though brushes aren't shown. I recommend cranking it to something like 8000 as a default so that you don't get objects disappearing on you in outdoor areas.

Make sure you set the pitch as well (test it at -45 first, then just change it to what you like.)

For the max_viewable, just set it to 9999 or higher, because even though it may not show the brushes, they're still being rendered anyway, and it looks really lame when you have brushes bleeding through and cutting out for no logical reason.

And to cap off Wild Card's comment, you must also run VIS and RAD after ensuring that there are no leaks in your map.

edit Looks like CCS beat me to it.

The maximum rendered distance is 2048. Changing the number in Map Properties doesn't really seem to have much of an effect (maybe, I could be wrong), as that appears to be the set limit in the engine.

You can defeat this limit by using a modification that has fog or something. But other than that, limit viewed areas to under 2048.

Campaignjunkie said:
The maximum rendered distance is 2048 . . . that appears to be the set limit in the engine.

You can defeat this limit by using a modification that has fog or something. But other than that, limit viewed areas to under 2048.

Ok, besides the fact that you're implying fog-enhanced mods let you see farther, I can very definately state that I have made maps with viewing distances of farther than 2048. I have seen plenty of maps with viewing distances of farther than that. Heck, something doesn't even qualify as a killbox unless you can see farther than that and there's plenty of those lying around. I really would like to know where you got this information from, because it doesn't seem to make sense.

Cash Car is right.

And yeah, it doesn't effect your polies at all:
http://www.cryotank.net/remote/viewdist512.jpg
http://www.cryotank.net/remote/viewdist9999.jpg

I always just set it for 9999 so that I don't have to worry about there being some weird long view angle where you can see stuff not being drawn far away. I suppose on some maps there might be weird bugs where some farther away brush was being drawn when it shouldn't be (through a skybox or something?), so you would set it lower. Or maybe if you are using env_fog in some mod, and you don't want people seeing farther with d3d (though that's not too hot an idea either). Overall though... just set it to 9999 or ignore it if you aren't having any problems.

Cash Car Star said:

Campaignjunkie said:
The maximum rendered distance is 2048 . . . that appears to be the set limit in the engine.

You can defeat this limit by using a modification that has fog or something. But other than that, limit viewed areas to under 2048.

Ok, besides the fact that you're implying fog-enhanced mods let you see farther, I can very definately state that I have made maps with viewing distances of farther than 2048. I have seen plenty of maps with viewing distances of farther than that. Heck, something doesn't even qualify as a killbox unless you can see farther than that and there's plenty of those lying around. I really would like to know where you got this information from, because it doesn't seem to make sense.

I was suggesting you could possibly mask the fact that polies were disappearing with fog.

Anyway I made a test map and it turns out I was wrong. Bleh. Sorry. But I have had some bugs concerning with visibility and distances (I guess VIS is making some mistakes), and I was convinced it had to do with this.

This was my competition map; until I lost interested and pretty much trashed it. The screens show a rather ugly, unfinished side of the map.

View distance is 4096. The object is much less than 4096 units away. Like really less. And seeing as 2048 was the nearest ^2 number to the actual distance, I figured that was the limit. Changing to 9999 had no effect.

There is a -maxdistance VIS command which ACTUALLY stops rendering brushes past a certain distance, but I've yet to see it even compile with that flag.

Look at the MS counts... looks like it screws the map over :eek:

What is the ms count? What does it show?

that's because of all the epolies Cassius, not the 9999 viewdistance. that's the "1-player" gruntfest on my basement map, they normally don't get that high since you kill as you go.

see, it's horrible with view distance 512 too:



stop thinking so bloody much!!!

I believe that the 'ms' count is some sort of draw/game lag

MS is the most reliable way to tell what parts of your map lag - it will go up, no matter what system you're on, for a combination of wpoly, epoly, and different things that lag the HL engine, such as conveyors, etc.

I was always under the impression that MS lag (high values) was more attributable to online problems - thats the only time i've heard it mentioned - in online/clan play...

high epolies, func_water, and other stuff can cause it to go up sometimes. under 3 or 4 seems okay, beyond that I actually notice a map feel 'off' just testing it alone.