Hey, folks, I found a way to achieve nodraw surface light!
If you use a normal brush in radiant, be sure to apply nodraw to the other sides.
Dunno this approach is technically “healthy” or elegant but it does work. ;^)
textures/virtualworld_light/white_1000
{
qer_editorimage textures/common/white.tga
surfaceparm trans
surfaceparm nolightmap
surfaceparm nonsolid
surfaceparm nodlight
surfaceparm noimpact
skyParms - - -
q3map_lightRGB 255 255 255
q3map_surfacelight 1000
}
By the way this shader can also be modified in the way written below.
textures/virtualworld_light/_cs
{
qer_editorimage textures/common/nolightmap.tga
surfaceparm nolightmap
surfaceparm nonsolid
surfaceparm nodlight
surfaceparm noimpact
skyParms - - -
}
Can be used as an alternative for structual nodrawnonsolid. :blah:
If you’ve ever wondered how you can achieve surface light without actually rendering its surface, it would be apparent how and where it might be used.
But one example would be a supplement for brightening up darker “surface”, rather than “area”, …just in my case.
I’ll upload editor(qeradiant) and in-game(q3) screenshots later.
Image uploaded.
Note that both point light and surface light are positioned at the same origin.
Surface light texture is applied to a patch mesh.
Light value can be configured by resizing the size of mesh.
It can also be rotated for desired aiming.
In this case I added
q3map_backsplash 0 0
to eliminate the light against ceiling completely for distinct comparison…
To get not much light on the ceiling just place an info_null below the light and target it to the light? Makes up for some nice realistic lighting.
Or I don’t get the point…
It’s not the first time someone’s ‘discovered’ using nonsolid shader lights (a technique which was even used by some Quake 2 mappers)… I still don’t see the point, it just seems like adding a bunch of faces to the BSP with no particular benefit.
Also, have you actually tested this in a proper map? I have a feeling that any surface with skyparms will emit light based on the first sky shader used by the compile.
@McNite
In this case I was referring to its use as a supplement for main lighting or completely an unreal lighting, yet satfisfactory, for speed mapping as such.
I won’t debate whether this lighting approach rules the others or not.
@Shallow
As mentioned abvoe , I have not yet tested fully.
I’ll do some tests near future and report back the result.
But ideally experienced mappers or coders would reply here about its technical factors, I hope.
update
It worked with both normal sky shader and the 'skyparm’ed one. 
But I could not test a lot of use of this method slowed down quake3.exe. :moo: