dark patches on bright surfaces

(]UBC[ McNite) #1

Hey @ all,

for some strange reason these dark patches popped up out of nowhere:

The whole room is well-lit with 8 lights (light 50; fade 0.2, slightly yellowish) that overlap nicely. Its only on this kind of surface/texture too, the rest of the map is well :eek2:
My compile settings: q3map2 2.5.16, front-end-tool is q3map2build,
BSP: -meta, -v VIS: -v LIGHT: -fast, -nocollapse, -patchshadows, -v, -samples 2 (-bounce 2 makes no difference), no problems in LIGHT stage except for 2 lines with “WARNING: Lightmap texture coords out of range”.
lightgrid in worldspawn is 128 128 64

Any help appreciated :smiley:

(TFate) #2

Looks like it could be 1 of 2 things.

  1. You’re using the wrong lightmaps… when you recompile a map and stick it into a .pk3 you were already using, you have to update both the .bsp and the lightmap files.

  2. You have a model in the distance which is casting a shadow a very long range. I’ve had tree models do this… check the location of the sun in comparison to models.

#1 Seems more likely, since you’re getting that lightmap warning.

(]UBC[ McNite) #3

hmmm I don’t have any lightmap files, never had in fact… maybe its a stupid question, but how do I get them?

(Ifurita) #4

when ever you run a light compile, you’ll find all of your lightmaps in /etmain/maps/[mapname] – all of these need to go into your PK3

(]UBC[ McNite) #5

lol thx for assuming I m that stupid :smiley: … there are no such tgas in that folder after a compile with a LIGHT stage

(Ifurita) #6

you might possibly have them in a mod folder somewhere. Do a search for your map name and see if they are somewhere else.

(The Wanderer) #7

use the -external switch during light compile so that your lightmaps are not stored in your bsp

EDIT
about your dark patches problem this might help you
http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&t=9310

(]UBC[ McNite) #8

No -external switch… :eek2:
And: no lightmap tga s in the whole ET-mapping-installation.

And yea its a shader with phong-shading, i ll try out what happens when I get rid of the phong.

(The Wanderer) #9

There’s an -external switch …trust me. It tells q3map2 to store your lightmaps externally as .tga’s in a folder in your maps directory and not inside your bsp.
i also recomend you increase your lightmapsize to at least 256. Right now you have them at 128 which are kinda low res.

(Shaderman) #10

I think it’s -export in Q3Map2 Toolz :wink: It creates the lightmaps in etmain/maps/mapname.

(]UBC[ McNite) #11

Its actually Q3map2build that I use, and it gets its switches dynamically from the version of Q3map2 it is linked to.

Problem with the patches is solved: I disabled the phong-shading :bump: still don’t have any lightmap tga’s and I think I ll won’t put them in as long as there are no probs with the light anywhere.

edit: shaderman is right, its the -export switch now. produces 19 files, 3.25 mb, while the BSP is reduced by about 3 megs. LIGHT-stage compile took about 6 mins longer this way though. Forgot to put the phong back in, so no idea whether this would work.

(]UBC[ McNite) #12

Just to end this and put all info in: Even with the lightmaps external (-export) and lightmapsize 256 I still get the dark patches when phong is enabled on those textures. Removing Phong makes everything fine. So Phong stays removed :bump:

(]UBC[ McNite) #13

New question: Is there any advantage to have the lightmaps stored outside the BSP? I m just curious because when I export them I get
a) the stadium effect back (shadows like from multiple light sources)
b) shadows inside of buildings for no reason straight through whole rooms (they can’t be from my clips that are all around the sky to limit the space specs can fly can they?)

I don’t have these when I don’t export the lightmaps.
There was no noticable FPS-advantage when I had them outside the BSP either… so what r they good for I wonder.