worldspawn/light settings for non-gay lighting

[dime1622]

lol i compile with light and vis for the first time. its… well… odd.

my worldspawn values are as follows:

ambient 15
classname worldspawn
mapcoordsmins -xxxxx xxxxx
mapcoordsmaxs xxxxx -xxxxx

my compile is as follows:

@ECHO OFF

:PATHS
SET MAP_NAME=pop_omaha
SET GAME_PATH=“C:\Program Files\Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory”
SET MAP_PATH=“C:\Program Files\Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory\etmain\maps”
SET Q3MAP2_PATH=“C:\Program Files\Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory\q3map2\q3map2.exe”

:BSP
SET BSP_VAR=-meta -leaktest -verboseentities
rem SET BSP_VAR=-meta
rem SET BSP_VAR=-meta -verboseentities
rem SET BSP_VAR=-meta -verboseentities -leaktest
rem SET BSP_VAR=-meta -verboseentities -debugportals
rem SET BSP_VAR=-meta -verboseentities -debugsurfaces
rem SET BSP_VAR=-meta -verboseentities -leaktest -notjunc

:VIS
SET VIS_VAR=-vis -saveprt
rem SET VIS_VAR=-vis
rem SET VIS_VAR=-vis -saveprt
rem SET VIS_VAR=-vis -saveprt -hint
rem SET VIS_VAR=-vis -saveprt -nopassage

:LIGHT
SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast
rem This one is used by SD on their maps: SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast -samples 2 -filter -bounce 8 -external -lightmapsize 256 -approx 8
rem SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast -bouncegrid
rem SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast -nogrid -thresh 2
rem SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast -bouncegrid -border
rem SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast -bouncegrid -bounce 3
rem SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast -bouncegrid -debugsurfaces
rem SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast -bounce 3 -bouncegrid -border
rem SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast -bouncegrid -bounce 3 -super 2
rem SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast -bouncegrid -super 4 -shadeangle 35 -thresh .5
rem SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast -bounce 3 -bouncegrid -super 2 -patchshadows
rem SET LIGHT_VAR=-light -fast -bounce 99 -bouncegrid -patchshadows -shadeangle 35 -super 86 -thresh .45

:OPTIONS
SET GEN_OPTIONS=-game et -fs_basepath %GAME_PATH% -fs_game %MAP_PATH% -v

:ACTION
%Q3MAP2_PATH% %BSP_VAR% %GEN_OPTIONS% %MAP_NAME%
%Q3MAP2_PATH% %VIS_VAR% %GEN_OPTIONS% %MAP_NAME%
%Q3MAP2_PATH% %LIGHT_VAR% %GEN_OPTIONS% %MAP_NAME%
PAUSE

but it looks like this: (the caulk is cause ive got untextured buildings and such)

any ideas? lol its WAY messed up :eek3:

[dime1622]

i assume i either need to chage my compile stuff and/or my worldspawn to define where the sun is, sunlight, etc, but i dont know how ET runs things

[joop_sloop]

first thing to do is to dump the “ambient 15” line from your worldspawn, ambient lighting is ugly! and can be done better by using a good skyshader and lights.
Next is using diffirent compile options, I’m also still experimenting with the lighting of my map and am nowhere near an expert so don’t hang me if I say something wrong now.
I use the following complie options for my lighting stage at the moment:

-light -fast -samples 2 -filter -bounce 8 -patchshadows -external -lightmapsize 256 -approx 8

next to that you might want to look at your tarrain shader, that might use some tweaking aswell…

[dime1622]

right now im not performing any shading. i will be soon, but not yet. ill tinker with my compile options.

[neotic]

If you don’t want gay lighting, get rid of the track lighting…

[chavo_one]

If you are using ambient, you have to set what color you want the ambient light to be. _color x x x
Also, I would suggest using _minlight instead of ambient. Do a search on the forum for discussions why.

As for the ugly harsh shadows on your terrain, you’ll need to tweak your terrain shader to fix it.
Try adding:

q3map_nonplanar
q3map_shadeangle 120.

[_DaRk_CrAzY-NuTTeR]

make sure there are no leaks

[G0-Gerbil]

If you are using ambient, you have to set what color you want the ambient light to be. _color x x x
Also, I would suggest using _minlight instead of ambient.

Actually, I prefer ambient to minlight.
Actually actually, they are both crap, but ambient to my mind can be better.

Minlight wins if generally your whole map is reasonably bright (although to be honest you don’t need either that or ambient in that case!), because even subtle light should be bright enough to avoid the minlight clamp.
Ambient works better if you have dark parts.

As an example, take an empty room with a squared falloff single light source in the middle.
Much of the lit areas will be dark and subtle.
minlight will actually clip most of this off, giving a small area actually affected by the light, with no subtlety.
ambient will add to this, maintaining the subtelty of the lighting, just making it overall a bit brighter.

[chavo_one]

Then you should play around with -gamma and -compensate if you want to keep the ratios the same.
http://www.quake3world.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/027372.html#15

[dime1622]

yeah i got things to look great now. however, i need to change the amount of light the sun puts out. how do i go about this? is there like “sunlight 2” in the worldspawn that i can enter?

[chavo_one]

This is controlled in your sky shader. From the screenshot, it looks like you are using the fueldump sky. Since you can’t modify official shaders, you will have to copy the fueldump sky shader into your own .shader file and then edit it. (Make sure you rename it so there aren’t any namespace collisions with the official stuff.)

The light is controlled by q3map_sun. All of this information has been covered before so do a little searching. I would actually suggest you research q3map_sunExt if you are going to write your own sky shader. Also research q3map_skylight to provide more ambiance.

[dime1622]

ah, cool, i was wondering how skies were controlled, im used to using the worldspawn to do the skies.