little things that annoy the hell out of me

Splaetos · Post by **Splaetos** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 8:57 am

two things that I can never seem to get around in my maps....

1- light slipping past walls at the edges... ruinign a perfectly good lighting effect I have all set up....

2-textures that are perfectly matched on straight walls that happen to me made up of multiple brushes, that just dont look right.

Is there any way to fix these things so that they look right? I dont know what else I could do with the textures aside from recreating the wall as one huge block and subtracting out the holes I need. And the light... the ony way ive found to seal in light is to encase the 'cracks' with further brushes, but I cant do that all the time, and the little white lines on the other side of a wall annoy the hell out of me....

any suggestions?

ziptie2k2 · Post by **ziptie2k2** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 9:49 am

I beleive tltrude said the best way to stop the light leaking thru edges in walls is to miter the corners and to never butt brushes against each other were there is a light source. Also I haven't tried this but maybe putting a small thin brush made of caulk that is in both brushes to seal the edge?

And tom said that when you have this light leaking it is also caused when you have two or more rooms sharing a wall, cieling, or floor. And creating seperate brushes should help.

Just a thought.

I do understand all the things you have mentioned as I too get very pi**ed off when these things pop up.

bdbodger · Post by **bdbodger** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 9:49 am

use control shift left click to select just the 1 face of all the brushes you want to texture and then if you have a 3 button mouse use the center button to click on 1 of the brushes or you can select the texture again from the texture window with all the faces selected and texture them all at once . That should make them match . If you don't want lights to go over a wall make each room have it's own ceiling floor and walls also set the key: light and give it a value so the inner ring of the light stays in the room and maybe move it down so it does not go though the ceiling into the room above .

tltrude · Post by **tltrude** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 12:55 pm

Most of the miss matched lighting problems will go away when you do a "final" light compile. But, you can help it by adding a little more ambientlight or some extra point lights.

One thing I just learned is, if your map has AI, you should add "-extra" to the light compile because it helps their sight (weird). Everytime I try "-extra", the light looks fuzzy.

Splaetos · Post by **Splaetos** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 6:51 pm

Well the compiles Ive been doing on this map are finals, because they dont take long.

I think I came to the conclusion last night while looking at the map, that doing some things in the manner I have been, it would be impossible to not notice some of these seems. Lights seem to work in large part by lighting faces, and it changes incrementaly by distance but only for each brush. You jsut dont see the same light transitions on a single brush as you see when you have a patchwork of brushes.

From now on, I will be doing certain walls differently, definately mitering 'inverted' corners, and csg subtracting some holes when I want a flat semeeless plane.

I think subtracting the walls of my red light cells, or other intertior sub-structures, into the main floor and walls of the room may also stop the light problems. I definately think rooms shouldnt share walls, so im goign to adjust some of what I do to reflect that better, but in some cases its not practical.

~About Ambientlight.

I know you guys love answering light questions with the word ambientlight, but I for one HATE it. I can see using ambient light to a degree larger then 5 5 5 only in certain circumstances, like an area that HAS access to indirect sunlight or something like that. Like an interior of a house, in a daytime map, should have ambient light. But personaly, I far prefer the lighting schemes you can craft without using ambient light, especialy when the map should have very little access to natural lighting.

Post by **Bjarne BZR** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 12:33 am

Splaetos wrote:~About Ambientlight.

I know you guys love answering light questions with the word ambientlight, but I for one HATE it. I can see using ambient light to a degree larger then 5 5 5 only in certain circumstances, like an area that HAS access to indirect sunlight or something like that. Like an interior of a house, in a daytime map, should have ambient light. But personaly, I far prefer the lighting schemes you can craft without using ambient light, especialy when the map should have very little access to natural lighting.

Amen brother! Halleluja!

Yep, you are completely correct. around 5 is good, more gives any map a boring light. But lighting is hard and takes work. So sometimes people will fall back on ambientlight istead of putting in the extra hours on point lights. A good map design can be made to look bad with bad lighting, and a bad map design can be made to look good... imagine what you can do with good lighting on a good map design... There is a reason film crews use lighting specialists... and pay them a lot for it as well

M&M · Post by **M&M** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 11:58 am

eeerrrmmmm. how exactly do i "miter corners"

I beleive tltrude said the best way to stop the light leaking thru edges in walls is to miter the corners and to never butt brushes against each other were there is a light source. Also I haven't tried this but maybe putting a small thin brush made of caulk that is in both brushes to seal the edge?

i have in my map a broken wall ,ofcourse i made the broken part of different brushes and the unbroken part of one brush .now they are all texterued with the same texture but when i go into the map i can c that the proken parts are obviously different ,they are a little dark and when u look at them u can definatly c they dont belong there .how do i fix that ,should i post a screenie?

Splaetos · Post by **Splaetos** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 12:13 pm

mitering corners basicaly means you overlap two walls where they meet, then you cut them on a diaganol so that they sit flush against each other instead of overlapping....

right now I am waiting for yet another compile, to see if mitering some corners helps the textures in my hallsways line up better... well I know it will help them line up better, because before mitering, one texture continued past a wall, into the unseen area. With the corner mitered, the texture should wrap around more precisely, or at least I believe that is how texturing mutiple walls works =)

M&M · Post by **M&M** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 12:31 pm

neat ,i guess it could help but im note sure yet until i try.however now that i understand what mitering is,i think it wont solve my problem as it seems thats those brushes respond differently 2 the light source nearby .on a normal brush which has light at its beggining u will c a gradual decrease of light on the walls,however once this brush ends and another new brush starts it looks a little different

.i guess i must post a pic

edit:darn i cant post a screenie,everytime i take one and open an editor 2 convert it ,it becomes very very dark and u cant c the difference ,is there anyway 2 make the screenies look more lighter ?like in the game

Splaetos · Post by **Splaetos** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 1:03 pm

turn up your brightness in video options... or advanced options... forget which.

I think some textures just dont like to be lit in small brushes =( Ive been moving lights around, to try and hide my seams. In some rooms, you dont see where my brushes meet at all, but in others, you see the line clearly, im still trying to figure whether the ones with more direct light, or less direct light are the oens that look good =p

anyone have any tips on making patchworks look better? Or do some textures just suck?

Post by **Bjarne BZR** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 2:19 pm

Havent tried it, but I remember seeing the advice to make separate brushes when a wall has 2 sides. So if 2 rooms are close to each other, try making the wall out of 2 separate brushes instead of textureing both sides of the same brush.

M&M · Post by **M&M** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:09 pm

turn up your brightness in video options... or advanced options... forget which.

its in the video and its maximized

thats y i posted here ,im sure any1 can make the game more brighter .but the screenshot looks so dark ,i cant even c the wall im discribing

So if 2 rooms are close to each other, try making the wall out of 2 separate brushes instead of textureing both sides of the same brush.

well ,i mentioned that this is a destroyed room,so it barely counts as a room and there is no other rooms beside it.its just a one room house where the ceiling has caved in and a few walls fell out

hogleg · Post by **hogleg** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:09 pm

While ya'll are on the subject, Does Shadow clip block point light?
Cause if it does can't u put a shadow clip brush where you want to block the light?

Splaetos · Post by **Splaetos** » Fri Mar 12, 2004 2:14 am

I realized today that brightenign the game doesnt make screenshot sbrigher heh. Can do it in a photo program.

Balr14 · Post by **Balr14** » Fri Mar 12, 2004 4:33 am

Making brushes detail will effect the way they light and often will correct lighting anamolies. You can also get very creative with shadow caulk to block light where you don't want it. Hollow walls or hollow walls with a layer of shadow caulk between the walls can be very effective as well. The Q2 engine was the only Quake engine that did a good job with light and shadow. All the other variations you have to work at getting it right.

Trouble getting textures to align on small brush sections is easy to deal with. Just make a solid wall, texture it, than carve it up with a clip brush and don't move any pieces. Sounds like you have been using fit on all brushes in a wall. That won't work.