[article] lights.rad

This is a discussion topic for the article "lights.rad" by Sparky911 which can be found here

Article description:

Where is it and how do I make one?

Where do i put the lights.rad when i'm done editing???

and do thos textures lights work when i just leave in it the gfc ?

Like the tutorial says Save/Extract it to the same directory as your compile tools. Example of mine is C:Program FilesValveSteamSteamAppsme@myemail.comsourcesdkin

As for editing I think you have to extract it to edit and save to it not sure. I found it handy and easy if it was extracted though.

This tut, is very serviceable!

Thanks for doing the work for me Sparky. I'm too damn lazy to write up any tuts most of the time.

I prefer to make a new .rad file for every map. That way I always know what textures will be lit and in what way without searching through the lights.rad file. To do this, simply make a new file called "mapname.rad" and place it in the same directory as your source file (.vmf).

This helps but now that i have it extracted what do i do with it?

Re-read the tutorial starting at step 6

It seems that the lights.rad file in the GCF file overrides the lights.rad file in your sdk/bin directory. I placed it with my vmf file and gave it the same name and that worked fine.

Thanks Sparky and Tracer!

Is the use of this program realy necessary, couldnt you still use notepad like with the original lights.rad

The lights.rad program still has to be extracted from the gcf (pak) and Paint is used to simply find the RGB value of the colors. Notepad is still used.

Looks like the .rad file in the GCF always replaces any external .rad. I've got two blank .rad files in \bin (<mapname>.rad & lights.rad), and it still reads the .rads in the GCFs. This is really a step backwards from Half-Life.

Is there some way around this?

Hmm I have never actually done it. I just knew how to get to it and how to replace it. Im sure its just a path error. Your lights.rad must have to go into a different place then where you have it

Maybe in the Options for Hammer I think thats where you set it to look for the .rad file.

Useful tutorial. I haven't tried extracting lights.rad using GCFScape, instead I did what Tracer Bullet said.

Is there any way to make a texture, emitting light, lighting itself? Now, if I make a room with no lights but a cube in the middle with a light emitting texture applied, the room is lit but the cube remains dark, only vaguely lit by light reflected by the floor, walls and ceiling of the room.
If I remember right, light textures in HL1 lit themselves.

Fine tutorial, except for the fact that you leave out the key step that you need the Microsoft .NET framework to run GCFscape.

I saw this a month ago, tried to install GCFscape, and it wouldn't install. I searched around but didn't see anyone else having trouble with it. Finally, tonight, SonicDM told me I needed .NET framework for it to run!

I can't imagine why you wouldn't just link to the GCFscape homepage, which tells you that you need .NET, and even has a link for download.

Thanks

Added the part about Microsoft .NET Framework. ALso changed tutorial a little to reflect the new file layout since I first posted this tutorial.