Q3map_fade for surface lights ?

(Hewster) #1

Hi,

Ydnar, I was wondering…would it be possible to have a “q3map_fade”
for surface lights, so we could have more control of the light intensity
from them. (would save adding separate point lights with our surface lights)

example:

The wall lights don’t fade much, and as such looks unrealistic, the light
they cast, should travel much further… the only way to achive with
ATM it to add a separte point light with a low intensity & fade…
just a thought :slight_smile:

Hewster

(ydnar) #2

I recommend not using surfacelight on tiny model triangles like that. Why?

  • Lots of lights. Every triangle creates an individual lightsource.

  • Each lightsource is a surface light, which is the slowest type of light to compile. Up to 10x as much computation is required per light than with entity or sun lights.

  • In order for tiny surface lights to have much effect, they have to be cranked to 1000+ lighting units. This, combined with their rather quick falloff, leads to the hot overbrighted circle nearby, and almost no lighting further away.

I’d remove the surfacelight from the shader and add “surfaceparm trans.” Stick and entity light inside each fixture and be done with it. Your compile times will shrink dramatically, and you will have much finer control over lighting levels.

Be sure to set the “nonlinear” flag, as RTCW entity lights are linear by default, and, well, that’s rather crappy. – Ed.

y

(system) #3

I’d remove the surfacelight from the shader and add “surfaceparm trans.” Stick and entity light inside each fixture and be done with it. Your compile times will shrink dramatically, and you will have much finer control over lighting levels.

Cool i didn’t knew that,too. Nice tip. thx. :slight_smile:

(Hewster) #4

mm yes… why why why … hehe Well in my defence I would say it
because its not originally my map (BoltyBoy’s) I was simply re-texturing/
optimizing (getting rid of lots of unseen lightmapped surfaces) and
re-compiling making use of some of your latest q3map2 wonders :cool:

But I guess in truth I just didn’t think about it :slight_smile:

I have now (thankyou) and this is the result :smiley:

Light compile times are actually about the same (260 seconds), although
there is around 1000 less light sources.

For those interested, each light has 2 point lights, a corona & a lightjunior,
with the following params:


PointLight1 (main illumination)
"light" "5"
"fade" "0.05"
"_color" "1.000000 1.000000 1.000000"


PointLight2 (secondary, for bright local illumination)
"light" "5"
"fade" "0.0080"
"_color" "1.000000 1.000000 1.000000"


LightJunior
"fade" "0.35"
"light" "300"
"_color" "1.000000 1.000000 1.000000"


Corona
"scale" "3.0"
"_color" "0.998245 1.000000 0.897185"
(redfella) #5

n1. /me didnt know this either. /me wishes he was in a borg collective

(ydnar) #6

You could also just use a single light with the nonlinear flag ticked (and perhaps a small, low-fade, low-light linear light paired up with it).

y