Outdoor area lighting tips?

(WL6) #1

Any practical advice on lighting outdoor areas?

How do you usually go about it? I’m having a bit of difficulty at the moment getting it just right… how do people usually go about the process?

(ronboy) #2

First of all, it’s a good idea to use ambient lighting to remove harsh shadows from the map. Simply select a brush (such as a sky texture) and in the entity properties window, type:
Key: ambient
Value: (Any number can be used, but I usually use 10-14)
Key: color
Value: 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000

Key and Value are the boxes that need to be filled in inside the entity properties window (N key on the keyboard). Hope this helps. :slight_smile:

(WL6) #3

Ah that’s helped tremendously, thanks!

Any advice on skyboxes?

(ronboy) #4

For skyboxes, check this page.

(obsidian) #5

For lighting, I usually go with natural lights first (sky and surface lights) tweaking values in the shader file, then add point lights as necessary. I have never found a use for global ambient lights. You can also try tweaking with -gamma and -compensate.

I would actually avoid using ambient unless you absolutely have to, there are plenty of other tricks that you should use before resorting to ambient. Ambient is global, so it will affect ALL of your lighting, including indoors. It tends to wash things out. If you have to, use _minlight as it is preferred over ambient because it’s scalar and will only affect parts of your map that are super dark leaving your well lit parts alone.

The best solution is to try writing better Q3Map2 style sky shaders and bumping up the skylight value if you want lighter outdoor shadows to simulate radiosity. This will give you the best realistic lighting results while leaving your indoor lights alone.

http://q3map2.robotrenegade.com/docs/shader_manual/light-emitting-shaders.html

(Pop Alexandra) #6

Wow! Thanks. That really helped me with my experience.
Have a great one, guys!