Tips for Lighting Outdoor Map Areas?

[4gotten]

Hi guys, recently i have been making some maps in Unreal Ed 2.

But with the "limited" radius of lights and lack of "directional lighting" how to you guys approch lighting up large outdoor map areas?

When adding multiple lights the shadows of objects are not accurate anymore, i mean it breaks imersion when shadows are left side of objects on one side and right on the other side of the map. (One light in center of map)

Perhaps could make some "alien planet" that has multiple sun lights as reason the shadows dont light up..

Are there any tips or tricks that you guys learned and use to light up large outdoor areas?

[Buggie]

You can try add some "invisible" limiters which shadow light sources and allow them make light only on one side. This must produce light similar to which come from one side.

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Automatically merged

AFAIK Ferali use something like that in CTF-Blice viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13704 but with movers. I think it can be done with usual brushes too, if lights placed outside play area.

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Automatically merged

Some concept. I think it can be better after polish. But you can view general idea.

SunLight.zip

(162.14 KiB) Downloaded 8 times

[4gotten]

Thanks for the suggestion, i never thought of something like that.

Altough i am not sure i fully understand it. I thought you meant to lets say build a cube with 1 side missing and light inside, and use multiple of those to light up the map.

But i never thought of using movers for that, so you build the map with movers blocking the light? Then have those movers move out so they are not visible?

Sorry if i missunderstood, i will take a look at the example map you gave me.

[Buggie]

With mover same story. You just trace light from second state of mover. When first state of mover is hidden somewhere. Maybe outside map, if it is work. If not work, Mover can be placed in some place, hidden for view and collide.

[Red_Fist]

It's hard to do with out crashing all the time. The only way I ever do it is use the spotlight, light. So I try to put like 9 equal grid equal height, centered above the large area I am lighting, say a Cube map, all pointing down, and I use the collision actor view to see the light radius, then look at 3D window for the way it looks to get a good brightness.

You can also mess with the "lightcone" property for narrow area, or larger

But then, high places will be brighter, so you need to move them around so a low part isn't brighter than a high part. And or set other lights around the surface for light in the dark places.

Things always crash while moving the spotlights around, so just go slow and save each time.
Now if you were using low radius spotlights, I don't think it would crash. But trying to light the map, is a good thing.

So once you get the top lights looking good, then add regular lights smaller radius for the dark spots on the ground. Try to use the least amount of lights.
Then set zone brightness, try like 18 to 30 or more , but you will wash out your lights. Also set level brightness to 1 at least one.

The other newer games have this so solved now, long time ago, but it's more fun in UT to figure out a way.
You can go with more spotlights, depending on how the map is. AND I also set them on an angle, you have like 2 rows of yellow facing in, the other side two rows of blue spotlights, for the shade of blue and the yellow of sun light. It does look pretty ok if the map geometry allows it.

[Swanky]

Agreed. Been using Spotlights as well. Spotlights + ambientlighting in the zoneinfo. You should be able to move spotlights safely when you switch to grid and re-render lighting before switching back again.

[Buggie]

As show practice, only Light actor fully baked into Lighmap without fps drop. Any other light actors can produce huge fps drop, so be careful with use Spotlights.

[Red_Fist]

The way I understand it is, only changing it to "directional" is the only difference between a regular light and a spotlight. I hope they are not zapping the FPS from that light.

I will try your tip, Swanky, regular crashing for this, is what makes work, out of it.

[Chrysaor]

I'd echo what others have said. Changing the spotlight's advanced property to bDirectional True is a must. But I don't tend to use these. They wash out my textures and as Red_Fist said, other games have figured this out better. UT's spotlight just doesn't work like we wish it would.

Instead I use Cylinder Lights and Nonincidence lights. It depends on how strong I want the shadows. Ambient brightness thru level properties does soften the shadows, but agree not to set it too high. While it's tempting to use one big light to saturate an entire area, you'll get a more even light and better control if you use several large, but not 255 radius lights.

With terrain, I always double my lights, with one set to special lit. Terrain is just funny and sometimes I need it to be lit differently than architecture that inhabits it. I also use special lit to iron out polys that are lighting poorly. I can place a local light with the right color and brightness but smaller radius set to SpecialLit, and even out poor rendering.

Oh, and change your display > draw scale so you can find those big outdoor lights easier.

[Red_Fist]

@Chrysaor can't argue with that, never tried it but I know the terrain problem you speak of. you dang mapping newbeez these days, anyway..LoLzzz

It's good to see all you old players-mappers from Nalicity, we friggen RULE. for mapping, via UT99 editor, so everyone else that don't get it.? go get it. haha.

I can see how you are getting old, you misunderstood, (well me explaining is just as bad LoL) You where always the carefree Christian full of heart, keep it that way.
LoL

On the other side is Mr Prophet, and the other guy in the "Religion" thread. Self proclaimed atheists. Hell, that was probably 15~ 20 years ago.