Study - Light

[XaNKoNII]

Hey guys, this isn´t some super duper special map (still new to this ) but decided to share my take on a light study of the engine .
hope you enjoy

Feel free to share tips or feed back

[Barbie]

Nice job - you should add the topic "coloured reflected light" somewhere in the wiki.
Hint: if you set "bDirectional=True" for your Lights with LE_StaticSpot, you'll see the direction where the light spots in the 2D views.
Hint2: instead of rotating the Lights with the mouse, you can enter rotation values in the Property window Movement>Rotation>Pitch|Roll|Yaw.

(A thing I'd had done in another way: I would have made all decorative brushes (eg. Brush135) semi-solid instead of solid to reduce the number of BSP cuts. Not a point in such a small map, but probability of geometry errors raises with brush count.)

[XaNKoNII]

Thank you for the feedback

Those hints are actually really helpfull :O especially the bDirectional one
As for the polygons, in this case (imagine this is a big map) should all the decorations be semi solid for the BSP cuts?

[Barbie]

As for the polygons, in this case (imagine this is a big map) should all the decorations be semi solid for the BSP cuts?

Nowadays I use nearly only semi-solid brushes except the few ones where another brush has to subtract from the solid (you cannot subtract anything from a semi-solid).
See also Feralidragon's short statement.

[PrinceOfFunky]

In DM-Stalwart you can make any brush to emit light, all the new brush you will put won't do it.
To do it, just set the Lightning and LightColor sections:

[XaNKoNII]

In DM-Stalwart you can make any brush to emit light, all the new brush you will put won't do it.
To do it, just set the Lightning and LightColor sections:

LightEmitterBrush.png

Although i am aware that most actors can emit light, this actually never occured me

Very interesting indeed...

[Barbie]

In DM-Stalwart you can make any brush to emit light, all the new brush you will put won't do it.

Can you give a description how to reproduce that? I don't believe that Brushes take part on building the Light Map.

[PrinceOfFunky]

In DM-Stalwart you can make any brush to emit light, all the new brush you will put won't do it.

Can you give a description how to reproduce that? I don't believe that Brushes take part on building the Light Map.

See it yourself:

LightEmitterBrush.unr

(10.6 KiB) Downloaded 64 times

That was DM-Stalwart, try to add a brush and make it emit light, I didn't find out how, I only managed to make the already placed ones to do it.
The only settings I changed are within LightColor and Lightning, reproduced the same settings of a freshly placed standard light.

[sektor2111]

And it's the same with sounds for majority of actors. Actually AmbientSound added nearby a tree is pointless, it's only charging number of actors with a stupidity... Even a light can make an Ambient-Sound - as mover does, but mover is capable of changing it depending on movement. And yes, my NsMonster uses lightning according to their team byte (for not adding HUD beacons and new replication things) and those are pawns not lights but they are capable of making a small light around - as Flag carrier does. Whatta philosophy... by selecting an actor from Level you can access Sound and Light and DISPLAY properties which will work for the most of them... The only thing to do at screwing stuff is checking UT.LOG if errors will not harm the game, and/or ON-LINE testing because not everything is OK in clients.

[XaNKoNII]

In DM-Stalwart you can make any brush to emit light, all the new brush you will put won't do it.

Can you give a description how to reproduce that? I don't believe that Brushes take part on building the Light Map.

See it yourself:

LightEmitterBrush.unr

That was DM-Stalwart, try to add a brush and make it emit light, I didn't find out how, I only managed to make the already placed ones to do it.
The only settings I changed are within LightColor and Lightning, reproduced the same settings of a freshly placed standard light.

This is really weird, the only way i could do it was by doing polygons from brush and add as a regular brush, then side by side i put all the information the same for light and light color but no sucess here, it was only when i messed with the brush propreties poly flag (was 0) and changed to a matching 32 that the new brush started emiting light but i noticed that it changed into a semi-solid. I deleted the original brush on the left as well as the one i created, did the same process again using the one on the right as the source of polygons but as soon as i finished putting the setting Polly flag to 32 suddenly BOTH brushes stoped emmiting light
Could this be related to Level info propretie or a zone info propetie?

[sektor2111]

See it yourself:

LightEmitterBrush.unr
(10.6 KiB) Downloaded 4 times

I see it doesn't include a PlayerStart - so it's NOTHING to see in game. But... I have added a start and... there is not so much light as expected... because probably light doesn't pass properly through Brushes . As I recall, a Brush intends to block lightning. However a general Level/Zone Light can be declared right in LevelInfo/ZoneInfo actors without messing X Brushes with lightning. If something is visible it happens because LevelInfo has set Light to 6 (a bit visible) else light here is a myth, you can remove file because you have nothing real. Else if you will set LevelInfo with Light 0 you'll see the place dark as a grave.

[PrinceOfFunky]

you can remove file because you have nothing real.

You're right it doesn't emit any light at runtime, but this mover does:

LightEmitterMover.unr

(8.4 KiB) Downloaded 53 times

EDIT: If you set bNoDelete to False, it will emit light in all the directions.

[Barbie]

Against my first assumption I noticed that brushes CAN emit light, even sound - that is done (as at all other Actors) at Actor's Pivot point. To get the light out of a (semi)solid brush, you have to move the Pivot out of the brush. Rebuild, activate RealTime Preview and switch to view "Dynamic Light" - voila. The problem is that this works only in UnrealEd, not in run time: Brushes are not spawned and do not exist while running a map. Movers in contrast, a sub class of Brush, DO exist during run time and therefore can emit light and sound (property group "Sound" is meant here, not the usual MoverSounds).

Interestingly the light map seems to get really confused if you use "brush lighting"...