Light Effect In Ns Map

P-Assaulter · March 2004

<div class="IPBDescription">How do they do it?</div> The light effect in NS map is very active and quite lifelike. But i don't think that all the light effect are made by light entity and light_spot entity. Except env_gamma may you tell me how do they do the lifelike light effect?

Plaguebearer · March 2004

texlights, light_spot, light, additive overlays, the -gamma switch in the light tool...

brute_force · March 2004

Use texture lighting. To do this, create a file called lights.rad. Actually, the name doesn't matter aslong as it has .rad as extension. Next, open this with Notepad or some other text editor.

Now here is where you enter the texlights. They're done in the following syntax:
TextureName Red Green Blue Intensity

TextureName is, of course, the name of the texture you want to be giving off light. The Red, Green and Blue all control the colour of the light, and the intensity is how strong the light should be. For intensity, try a value of 500-3000 or so.

Please note, that when you assign texlights to a texture, that texture will appear fullbright in game. So if you want to avoid this and only want the "light" in the texture to be bright, use overlays.

Overlays are textures completely black version of the original texture except for the part you want. Try searching for "fx" in your ns2.wad, you'll have a few there. Make a 1 unit brush textured with the overlay ontop of the light texture and make this brush into either a func_wall or func_illusionary. Make Render Mode "Additive" and FX Amount "255". Then, assign the texlight to the overlay.

Finally, add -lights LOCATIONOFYOURLIGHTS.RAD to your hlrad.exe in the compile, which will make your map use those texture lights.

Crackerjack · March 2004

In CO_Uplink (you can probably find it on the section page in the mapping forum), I used several additive overlays which were turned into tex lights.. of course using the Lights.rad. But unfortunatly not all lights have additive overlays either making the light texture look sorta poor or using light enities.

Everything on the walls in CO_uplink is using the texture lighting technique. And lights on the ceiling were alluminated by light enities and the light spots one the ground were of course light_spot enities (1 for each spot).

If you have any other questions about lighting... or see something you like in the map and want to know how to do it.. post in this thread and I will try to help the best I can.

Note: I used an example of my map to help you better understand lighting, what it looks like, and help you decide if you like the technique or not. Not to show off any skills.. There are plenty better mappers on this forum than I.

HanzGrub3r · March 2004

Another cool thing you can do is use func_illusionary brushes to cast shadows that would otherwise be impossible with normal light entities.. you can create bar shaped lights (instead of simple round spots) by creating the func_illusionary brush with a hollow in the centre then cast a spot light entity through it... just a little tip for those that wanted to know <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />

Wolv · March 2004

To minimize entity and CPU useage of that technique, make sure to use the NULL texture on the brush and use ripent to remove it after the compile.

P-Assaulter · April 2004

Thanks for your initial explanation. I understand the skill of overlay and i can apply it.
If we use light entity and spot light entity to make the light effects which are very ugly and ungainly. So I won't use them anymore, as I can't bear them.

So I have two questions as below. I wish that you can teach me and I will be glad to listen to you.

P-Assaulter · April 2004

In CO_Uplink, you can find that there are some light tubes or lambs, which are on the ladders or on the lower part of walls. If you decompile CO_Uplink to .map and view it in VHE, you cannot find that there have any lights on the ladders or on the walls. Two pictures as below show their difference in game and VHE.

Picture1: The lamps on the lower part of pillar
Picture2: No lamp on the lower part of pillar

Anything happen while it was decompiling and cause that problem or it is nothing wrong? If it is nothing wrong, I’m so interested on it. How do they make it?

P-Assaulter · April 2004

The lamps on the lower part of pillar

P-Assaulter · April 2004

No lamp on the lower part of pillar

P-Assaulter · April 2004

Question 2:
I understand the skill of overlay bit I don’t understand about texture light as I haven’t apply that skill before. I’m very interested about it. May you talk about it more and give me some detail please?

brute_force · April 2004

Did you just decompile co_ulysseus? <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif' />

As for texture lighting, I explained it in my earlier post.

Plaguebearer · April 2004

It's pretty obvious - in decompiling, the texture alignment got shot to hell.

For texture lighting, you edit your lights.rad file. The format is:

NAMEOFTEXTURE RED GREEN BLUE INTENSITY

like

~SPOTRED 255 0 0 150

P-Assaulter · April 2004

A question...
Except NS, can we apply texlight for other games in Steam or the mod games of HL1.1.1.0?

Light Effect In Ns Map

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