model lighting

I have an angled plane coming up out of my
model at about 45 degrees. The light is coming down on the model so the
top half the plane is almost full bright while the bottom half is dark.

Kinda like this:

light../

side./

....../ dark

...../ side

This creates a very large and noticeable contrast. The texture on
the angled plane has a transparent mask. Is there any way to control
how much light a texture can receive on a model? I would like to be
able to control how much light is applied to the top portion of the
angled plane so I can more closely match the bottom. I'm not trying to
block the light but make it so the two sides are more closely matched.
Any ideas?

i think that light_dynamic does the trick, but im not sure if you can make it darker using it.

an actual picture of the problem would help, though it sounds more like an issue with the smoothing groups on the model, rather than the type of light that's shining on it.

This is a tree model compiled as a prop_static and it getting its light
from a light_environment. The branches are square planes textured
with a transparent branch texture. There are several parameters
for the VMT that might help but I don't know the right syntax or
purpose of these options: "$minlight", "$maxlight", "$brightness",
"unlitfactor".

Basically, the top side is brightly lit by the light_environment and
the bottom side is much darker. I need a way to control how the
branch texture is lit. I'll try and post some pics when I get
home of what I'm talking about.

The light shouldn't be coming straight down on it from a light_environment in the first place, unless your map is set on the equator at midday- alter the pitch of it so it matches the position of the sun in your skybox. See how it looks then; if it's still bad, I can't help except to suggest trying a light_spot underneath the tree pointing up lighting the underside a bit.

if your problem looks like this



which your 1st post pretty much says it does, then it's not something that map lighting will correct. it happens because the 2 polys that make up that plane will try and blend whatever lighting their neighbours have with their own. when you use simple shapes like boxes, sharp angled corners mean that the lighting that neighbours receive can be drasticly different from each other, so smooth blending becomes a problem.

i think you'll maybe need to re-make the model with more polys before you solve this. :/

Here are my dark and light pics:

http://webzoom.freewebs.com/theairwolf/dark.jpg

http://webzoom.freewebs.com/theairwolf/light.jpg

Now you may say it doesn't look that bad, but from a distant the
contrast of the light and dark really make the tree look fake.
I'm looking for a way to control how bright a texture on a model can
be. I was hoping there was a VMT parameter that would tell the
texture that it can be only so bright.