11 replies to this topic

[Martin Thompson]

Hi guys,

I'm currently working on a map and it's almost done (its actually an update to an existing map) but i've hit a snag.

Whenever I compile with lights, i get these "dark spots" in the map. This means that some vertices don't recieve lighting AT ALL, thus making them completely black, whilst
the vertex next to it is lit how it is supposed to be.

Are there any q3map2 flags i need to set in order to fix this?

Hopefully some of you have some tips for me. I didn't touch the lights in the original map and the original map is lit properly so I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Regards, Martin

PS
I've attached a screenshot of the phenomenon

Attached Files

•  stvoyhm 2011-11-02 23-13-24-40.png   402.43KB   54 downloads

[GSIO01]

First off all is that a patch or a brush?

What are your light compile options?

I'll have to do some thinking if there is a q3map2 flag that might help there. I'm a bit out of that right now having done coding mainly for so long now.

[Martin Thompson]

Oh a reply, lol, i thought I would get an email about that, wierd... Anyway, here is my compile options:

Q3Map2: BSP -meta, -light -fast -filter -super 2 -bounce 2

And it's a brush by the way. I have several of those sections in the map, since its a piece of map
that is repeated on bends and crossways of corridoor and most of the pieces suffer from the same problem.

I don't know if its any problem or not, but the Vis doesn't compile for the map since the map is to big (MAX_MAP_VISIBILITY),
but it already was like that when I got it so....

[GSIO01]

This error can be a bit tricky from what I remember.
I guess the texture is the light source there right?

If that is the case try to make sure that the brushes don't overlap with the brush that has the light emitting texture this might help. Also you could try turning that brush into a detail brush if it isn't one already. Last thing that comes to my mind right now is that you could try to delete the brush and recreate it and see if it helps or maybe replace the roundings by patches which looks better anyway.

I don't think that the fact that you can't do a vis compile has anything to do with the bug. Anyway I highly suggest you do a full optimization of the map (I know that can be a lot of work on a map that isn't optimized at all or only a bit but it's worth it). The vis is very important for performance. I'm sure you now your bits about optimal mapping anyway Chrissstrahl (he is somewhat of an optimizing pro) wrote this wonderfull tutorial about the topic of optimal mapping. It's for EF2 but applies to EF the same anyway.

[Martin Thompson]

Yup I read that article from Chrisstrahl a while back, unfortunately I didn't make the original map and I'd rather not touch to much of the original area's.

As for the bugged brush, it was already detail, i notice alot of brushes in the same position have this lighting problem on the map.
I'll try replacing it with a patch, since its a repatative "error" copy and pasting it shouldnt be to much work.

I guess the texture is the light source there right?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this, the white texture is a light source, but there is also a light entity in the middle of the area there.
Anyway, the brush does indeed partially overlap the brush above it which has a light texture on it, ill try and see if i can do anything with this fact.

Thanks for your reply, I'll keep you informed.

[Martin Thompson]

Hey there. Still having this very annoying problem after doing a complete build ([q3map2] -light -fast -super 2 -filter -bounce 8 "[MapFile]").

Any suggestions? I'd really like to release the map, and in the area i took screenshots off, i didn't change anything, i didn't touch the lights nor the mesh.
Any way of fixing this?

[Harry Young]

are you using a light-entity or is the light-information by the light-texture (via shader)?

[Martin Thompson]

Sorry for the late reply, i forgot i posted here. The light is coming from the light-entity. Thats how the rest of the map is lit aswell.

[Harry Young]

hmm... you may want to try using a shader. I can provide you with one later (worked quite extensively with that in the last few days for an internal map) It's at least worth a shot

Edit: Okay, found another minute and here it is:


textures/yourmapname/texturename
{
//you may want to increase or decrease the next line if needed, it does the lightning
q3map_surfacelight 400
surfaceparm nolightmap
{
map textures/hall/primaryhall_light.jpg
}
}

Put it in a /baseef/scripts/yourmapname.shader and add a new line with yourmapname to /baseef/scripts/shaderlst.txt

Then you should start your radiant and replace all the light-textures in one room with this one, remove the light-entities and testcompile it. If it works I recomend to replace all other textures by texteditor (find and replace)

[Martin Thompson]

Thanks for your time. I'll try this as soon as im working on the map again.

[Harry Young]

Gladly.

A helpful advice for editor convinience: Usually one can define an Image for a shader to be visible in the radiants texture-browser. It somehow doesn't work for me toh and I really don't care cause I found a simple hotfix for that: in your case just grab the textures/hall/primaryhall_light.jpg from baseef/pak0.pk3 and copy it as baseef/textures/yourmapname/texturename.jpg it'll appear in the browser then with the shader loaded ingame and you won't have to redistribute it as the game will still grab the original file for rendering (for the record: you'll have to redistribute the shader)