uncolourable coronas

M&M · Post by **M&M** » Wed Mar 10, 2004 6:01 pm

ive made white coronas on light bulbs all around my map ,and everything was fine when i had white light.but i tried 2 chang ethe colour 2 c if its better but the coronas wont change

.the light change fine but the coronas wont change colour no matter what.i tried pressing the K button then choosing the colour ,but when i compile the corona has the same colour.i tried taking the value of the light entity window and paste it in the corona entity window but still it didnt work.all i get is a white corona and a coloured light !!!?? this is so annoying

i would appreciate any help on this

tn in afvance

tltrude · Post by **tltrude** » Wed Mar 10, 2004 6:14 pm

The corrona is not a light. It is just a model with a fuzzy see-through texture. There is one that is a little orange. But, if you want more colors, you'll have to make a new tiki, image, and shader for each.

Axion · Post by **Axion** » Wed Mar 10, 2004 6:17 pm

The corona's can't be edited with radiant, because they are static models. You'd have to edit the.tik file (and probably some other ones) to get the color you want.

What color are you using for the light?

M&M · Post by **M&M** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 10:53 am

oh i c,in nemisis' tut on coronas he mentioned that u can create a corona_util and choose its colour thru radient (by pressing K).ofcourse by choosing white it worked fine

.i tried changing the colour of light in a certain area of my map and i couldnt change the coronas 2 fit with it .no it looks really wierd.i tried using red and blue light btw.
so whats the simplest way 2 make a colored corona ,without 2 much work

.im currently unsure which colour i want 4 my underground tunnels ,red looks nice,but so does blue and white .so i dont know which i should choose,but if changing the corona prooves hard then ill go with white

.

maybe i should post a screenie or 2 so u could help me with choosing the colours as well

M&M · Post by **M&M** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 12:36 pm

here is how the coronas look!!!
also which theme should i choose?the red colour ,blue or just the ordinary plain white ??

edit:funny how the coronas look coloured now

,in the game they just look white

tltrude · Post by **tltrude** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 2:27 pm

Actually, there already is a corona_red. It is in FX > Corona > Red. It's not very bright, so you may need to scale it up a little.

The color you choose sets the mood. Red is panic, blue is spooky, and dim white is mystery(?).

Axion · Post by **Axion** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 3:48 pm

I don't know if you are using the Spearhead SDK, but if you are, there are also orange and green coronas in there for you to use.

M&M · Post by **M&M** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 7:42 pm

no its just plain old mohaa with the damned buggy mohradient

.
i guess ill choose red cause i can get a red corona easily

.

alright,one more thing about underground light while im at it.i have light coming out from under a wall

.the other area of the wall is just the sun .make sense?
also this happened when a wall has 2 different coloured light sources on each side .so what do i do 2 fix it.if i reduce the light radius on one of the sides ,i will get a weak light on that side(not enough in that place),but if i increase the light radius it passes other neigbouring walls,and sometimes onto the surface .how do i stop that ?

diego · Post by **diego** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:02 pm

The Red and Blue versions are too pure... especially the blue... and they look unnatural. The white is just boring. If you use blue, shift the color a little brighter and a little greener. If you use red, add a touch of white or yellow to it.

But the best solution would be to use warm, natural looking lights for the light bulbs, but add additional lights with colors for accents.

Are your texture settings really low? Everything looks fuzzy. If not, you might want to scale your floor and wall textures to .5

M&M · Post by **M&M** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:12 pm

yeha i noticed that the screenshots look fuzzy,specially after i switched it from .tga 2 .jpg

.i might have made it low textures,not sure though cause its usually default that i change the textures b4 taking a screenie,i might have forgot .

anyways ,tnx 4 the input on the light .but how exactly do i add a touch !!??? another light source scaled down? also can u help me on this

I wrote:alright,one more thing about underground light while im at it.i have light coming out from under a wall .the other area of the wall is just the sun .make sense?
also this happened when a wall has 2 different coloured light sources on each side .so what do i do 2 fix it.if i reduce the light radius on one of the sides ,i will get a weak light on that side(not enough in that place),but if i increase the light radius it passes other neigbouring walls,and sometimes onto the surface .how do i stop that ?

diego · Post by **diego** » Fri Mar 12, 2004 1:20 am

If you have light leaking underneath your walls, offset the inner surfaces like this:

Wall

l------l
l------l
l------l_______________
l-----/ [Side View]
l---/ Floor
l-/_________________

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regarding color choices. You want to shift them so they are not absolutely pure colors - unless you are trying for a fruity look. I have a DOOM style room in my map that does use pure red light and is enhanced with red tinted textures.

RED -- RGB values of 255, 50, 25
There is a red Caged Light static Obj
you could use instead of the uncovered light bulb and it will look better with this color.

Blue -- RGB values of 0, 170, 255
This is more of an "ice blue color". It is brighter than what you have making it look more like blue light, and less like blue textures. It also doesn't look too bad with a white corona. I have similar tunnels in my map that have this kind of light in them.

Warm Light -- RGB: 255, 225, 175
This is good for a yellowish incancescent bulb. The Utility corona looks best with it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

As far as mixing the light colors in your tunnel:

The blurry images are a little confusing. It looks like you are showing us 3 tunnels with 3 different lighting styles. correct? Either way, you have a few options to consider. It looks like you have a room in the center on the white image.

1. You could light that room differently from the hallways so it stands out more:
A: Warm lights in the room, Cool Blue lights in the hallways. Maybe 1 red light in the room to accent some machinery.
B: Colored Light (Red or Blue) in the room. Warm lights on the light bulbs in the hallways.

2. You can add another type of lamp object to the tunnels as an alternate form of lighting. In my tunnel, I added the caged lights just above the floor to simulate emergecy lighting. With that in mind, you could use the Red or Blue lighting on the light bulbs, and then add small yellow lights along the floor. ---- Using a section of a Lighted Window pane on a brush surface will work great for this since they cast light too. Keep them small and use sparingly until you get a feel for how bright they make the tunel.

3. You can use the colored lights like an ambient fill in the tunnel. But then add Yellow lights for the light bulbs to use as the actuall light source.
___________________________________________________

O X O X O X
___________________________________________________

(hmm, the spacing does not work on those symbols, they should be spread out down the entire hallway)

O = Warm light bulb light source X = Dark colored Blue or Red
The colored lights are not ambient lights, just point lights that you use to fill in the gaps not brightly lit by light bulbs.

When you start mixing the different colored lighting, you will be much happier with the results. Adding more detail like Pipes, wall supports, and electrical boxes will give your lights more interesting surfaces and textures in the tunnels to illuminate. It will also give you more shadows, and more contrast.

Hope this helps.

M&M · Post by **M&M** » Fri Mar 12, 2004 7:00 pm

wow ,thanx man these are great tips

,maybe u should make a tut about great lighting

.
i agree the pictures look a little fuzzy but i dont know y that happened when i converted from tga 2 jpg

(they are not the 2 be converted).

ur right those are 3 diffeent tunnels in the map ,they are all connected and make some sort of an S figure or a digital 5 on the calculator where the 3 longest areas are in the pics and the 2 shortest areas arent.one of the tunnels as u can c has a whole in th ecieling which leads 2 the upper area (u cant climb though,just go down).
there isnt any machinery in the map but i kinda like red (looks nice, specially because they have their coronas

).well ,i dont want 2 have 2 light sources (emergency light + usual one) cause the map is 2 small 4 that . however im definitly gonna try that switching between different light coloures in a corridor and c .

Adding more detail like Pipes, wall supports, and electrical boxes will give your lights more interesting surfaces and textures in the tunnels to illuminate

u think i should add supports?cause the map textures look like concrete (not visible from fuzzy pic) it would make it look nicer but id have 2 change the textures of the whole tunnels.also i have electrical boxes in 2 rooms in oppisite sides of each other(should i have more?).

tnx again 4 ur previous help

diego · Post by **diego** » Sat Mar 13, 2004 1:24 am

It doesn't matter if your walls are concrete. You can still have support beams at regular intervals, particularly in interesections. Square hallways are boring. (Granted, I didn't do much to mine either... too lazy LOL)

This is a cross section of what I had in mind for support beams -- with a reversed duplicate beam on the other side. They can be concrete supports. Or you can texture them like small steel girders or even wood. They also don't have to have support columns, they could just be a horizontal beam across the cieling. Or you don't need them at all. It's your map.
_______________________
-----------l----SupportBeams
-----------l-------__________
-----------l------/
-----------l-----/
-----------l----/
-----------l---/
-----------l--l
-----------l--l
-----------l--l
-----------l--l
-----------l--l
-----------l--l
-----------l--l
---Wall---l

You can run pipes along the cieling, or horizontally and verticallly along the walls. Metal brushes can be used to simulate wiring lines laid externally along the walls. This is how I laid out my lights for my tunnels.
________________________________________

---------[]---------[]---------[]---------[]---------[]
________________________________________

You could also build recessed areas in the walls. Texture the recess with a control panel, then put a fence texture in front of it that is flush with the wall. You can then add a small colored accent light to the paneled area.

I admit, a lot of this is stuff is probably more work than you want to put in a hallway, but if you think people will spend a lot of time down there, it is worth the extra time. My tunnels are just to get you from point A to point B so there is not a lot of fighting going on in there... but I've got some exploding barrels in there just in case

I like having the hole in the cieling to cast light into the tunnel. That will be most effective if the sunlight color contrasts with the tunnel lighting however you light it.

Bright colored lights really make an area come to life. I think that is probably because it took so about 6-8 years after DOOM for developers to be able to use them. (I remember getting my old Voodoo 16 card and playing Heritic 2 with it for the first time after ditching my Matrox Millienium... WOW was I stunned.)

But if the entire hallway is Blue like in your picture, it looks flat. It is difficult to judge distance and depth. I also can't see where the tunnels branch off. And it will be very hard to see other players in it. With creative lighting, you can lead the player's eye where you want him to look. Make the intersections more prominent so he doesn't get completely lost. But you can still have nice shadowy areas for people to hide in... Maybe a recessed alcove that just happens to be completely in shadow. Good place to ambush someone with a shotgun.

Ambient lighting is also a point of contention among mappers. A lot of guys are only using 5-10 % ambient light if at all. (Look at "The Canal" screens on the opening page. That's a daytime map but the shadows are almost completely black.) My own opinion is that is too dark unless it is a nighttime map. I'm leaning more to 20-25% on a daytime map. But since everyone's monitor and video brightness settings are different, it's a tough call.

If I play the stock maps on default settings, I think they are too dark. So I increase my video brightness enough to fill in the shadows so they are not completely black and I can see someone hiding there. But I never want to compromise the color integrity and wash out the map with brighter settings.

So when I lit my map, I started with a dim ambient light. Just enough to see by with my adjusted brightness settings. Then added my sun and lamps after that. I know that my ambient light will be too bright for some people's taste, and too dark for other's. But if you give the map enough ambient light to start with, everyone can always go darker. If they want to go brighter, they will hopefully not have to crank it up so high that the sun color get's washed out.

Also, if your dark areas are almost completely black, your video card will have no color information to rely on for a brightness increase. So when you do increase the brightness, you won't have black shadows, you will have Grey ones that just look flat.

(That's my only gripe about the Canal Map. You should download it if you haven't... it is still a beautiful map)

Sorry, that got a lot longer than I intended. I don't know if I would write a Tut on lighting. It's my specialty, but in the end, these are still just my opinion.

tltrude · Post by **tltrude** » Sat Mar 13, 2004 4:33 am

One good thing about support columns is that players can use them for cover. Then you don't need those boxes or other FPS robbing junk. The same thing could be done with alcoves. Anyway, keep gameplay in mind at all times because it can make, or break, the map.

M&M · Post by **M&M** » Sun Mar 14, 2004 12:09 am

how can boxes be fps robbing

? a support coloumn should be 6 faces ,so is a box !!! .also ,support columns are supposed 2 be thinner than boxes so u cant actually hide behind them ,although they add a nice look 2 the tunnels (perhaps i should add them!!??)

anyways ,i have my heart set on the red colour now since it has its own coronas .but i still have a problem ,how do i stop light from passing thru a wall (brush) without reducing the size?
cause when im over the ground and pass over a light source the weapon turns red (im sure i look red 2 if some1 else saw me).also the red light sometimes lights other areas i want dark.