Lighting - coronas

[Raylen]

Hiya,

Someone (lots of people actually) said I should use coronas for making nice lighting. I'm going to come clean and say I'm a noob here, but:

1. What is a corona?
2. What does it look like?
3. Why do I need them?
4. How do I use them?

Related to this, do they work with software rendering?

Thanks!

PS. I know the answer to question 1 in terms of the sun, I mean in mapping terms

[Creavion]

This explains everything, no need to reinvent the wheel:
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:Corona
http://www.unrealsp.org/community/level ... ing01.html

And yes: Cornoas are working with software, but why do you do care? I mean... its software.

[>@tack!<]

coronas are these lights that you see in the screenshot, they scale with the player's position to it. you have to set bCorona to true in a light actor, the skin will be the corona texture and the drawscale will be the scale of the coronatexture. also the texture mixes with the lightcolour you choose if im right ( never used that ).

[Metalfist]

It's explained in the The Complete Unreal Ed Reference Guide (TCUERG) under lighting.
It's very complete full of tutorials (with pics) and tips, maybe it will help you further with mapping.

http://www.oldunreal.com/editing/TCUERG.zip

[FraGnBraG]

Just a word of caution (not that anyone will care too much too many coronas in view (or zone) in one area will cause performance problems and sometime will not function correctly or as expected. Sometimes, some will randomly "go dead". This usually a sign there's too many in that one area. Also consider that not all light sources will have coronas, that depends on atmospherics and type of diffuser/light that's used. For example, certain types of neon-type lights produce no bloom/corona effect (i'm talking reality here, folks). Take a walk in a busy downtown sometime and observe al the "lighting". Interestingly, the behavior of coronas in unreal is the opposite of "reality". Typically, walk towards light source that has a corona in unreal, as soon as you enter the radius, poof, there the corona at it's largest size. Continuing towards the source causes the "ball" to shrink etc.
In reality, it starts from nothing and grows as you approach the source, being largest when you are very close, or underneath. Look at those freeway street light pillars at night (or the standards in shopping mall parking lots etc. Very interesting...

Anyways, coronas can sweeten th eye-candy of a scene, but don't think you have to use them everywhere...
my 2 centz

[SzGergo]

Anyway, there are lot of differences between reality (how you sense lighting) and the abstract representation of that sense on a monitor screen.
Corona is a simple representation of multiple effects of the sense of diffused lighting around a light source. Light diffused by the humidity of the air, as well as diffused by the wet lense of your eye your is percepted as some corona around the source. Light reflection of your eyelashes also makes effect.
Moreover if you stare directly into a strong light your retina will not handle the huge contrast between dark background and the direct light. This will dazzle you and make you percieve some corona around the light too.

Irl it is quiete a subtle phenomenon that feels natural, but it can be abstracted well as a translucent splash or halo around light sources in 3d fps games such as the ut.

If applied correctly, such primitive stuffs miming very complex phenomenons can work well and become eye-candy.

[SzGergo]

it would be nice, but normaly it is not possible.

However, for example, Revelation has some special scripted actor for his maps which lets coronas work in skyboxes too.
DM-Valkyrie, or DM-Gorgon, as far as i remember has a beautiful, working halo around the sun.

I also dropped him some pm asking him to let me use that actor, cuz i need something like that for my project, but he never answered

[Creavion]

Give him credits and its fine.

[SzGergo]

Give him credits and its fine.

I opened it with the editor, but most of the map is hidden. There are also quite a few custom actors there, and i could not figure out how things work. Maybe when i get home i could give it a try to reverse-engineer that sun-halo stuff.

Too bad i know nothing about scripting.

Maybe i will kindly ask somebody here who know uscript to gather that stuff for me out of that map if i cant.

But it seems to me he did all those tricks cos he dont want others to steal his stuff.


(((Moreover i will need other effects too)))

[Creavion]

Give him credits and its fine.

I opened it with the editor, but most of the map is hidden. There are also quite a few custom actors there, and i could not figure out how things work. Maybe when i get home i could give it a try to reverse-engineer that sun-halo stuff.

Too bad i know nothing about scripting.

Maybe i will kindly ask somebody here who know uscript to gather that stuff for me out of that map if i cant.

But it seems to me he did all those tricks cos he dont want others to steal his stuff.


(((Moreover i will need other effects too)))

I know something like that is BAD behaviour (in terms of speaking about other people like I do now): but maybe JackGriffin or Ferali would agree to help you out. Bot of them are scripter from their hearts, or something like that. (or just PM them). Ferali however is busy with a lot of things right now, chances are low.
About stealing: There is nothing that much you can do to avoid that: Killing of brushes and hide somehow script code.
In newer engines there is even less you can protect against "stealing". I mean its not like with Trackmania where you can ... afaik ... protect your map with a password (if you try to open them with the ed).

[UT Sniper (SJA94)]

@SzGergo

this could be going a bit off topic but...
The best way to get into scripting is to start of tweaking scripts that are already been made thats the way i learned how some funnctions worked, then go on to make a small mod and then large mods.

My advice would be to tweek some light actors it might get what you want ive done stuff like that with Multikill awards & Killing spree and also CTFGametype

[SzGergo]

Hmm thanks. I think i will pm those guys if i am stuck.

[Revelation]

Still active topic?

First of all, there's nothing hidden in DM-1on1-Angeldust, one could actually rip the flare script from there, however I admit it's complicated.
So, since I've given it to some other guys already anyway, here's my latest version of the sun-flare, as used in Angeldust.

Usage should be kind of self-explaining, but for a short How-To:

• Place a RevSunMarker (Actor -> Keypoints) in your Skybox where the sun is located.
  Adjust the properties:
  • SkyZoneTag must be equal to the Tag of your SkyZoneInfo.
    You need to set FlareBrightness, FlareScale and FlareSkin for the first flare [0] at least.
    This [0] is the sun flare itself, while [1] to [7] are the optional halo flares. FadeInTime and FadeOutTime are optional, too.
  Place some RevSkyMarkers in your map, just in front of the FakeBackdrop textures.
  Adjust their CollisionHeight and CollisionRadius, so that all necessary FakeBackdrop textures (see below) are covered. Use "Radii View".
  • BUT: Place them only where necessary, which means, only in front of those FakeBackdrop textures through which you can actually see the sun!! Too many or too large RevSkyMarkers heavily impare the performance!
    In other words: Place just enough of them, so that from any point of the map's playable arena from which you can see the sun, you look into it through the collision of a RevSkyMarker.
    If that wasn't understandable, just look at my DM-Valkyrie in UnrealED to see where and how I placed them. ^^

And at last, as Creavion said: Just give me credits and it's fine.

[SzGergo]

Oh, thanks! Tomorrow i get home, and i will try that out!

Maybe the problem was at my end, and thats why i thought you deliberately hid it, plus not just long before i had read something about hiding the map in editor exploiting some bug.

I planned to tamper with my skybox anyway: i will try to make those nasty seams disappear at the edges of the sky textures (see what happens when i render them only to 510*510 and extend to the correct 512 by duplicating the pixel-rows and columns at the edges)
And, i will try out your awsome halo-stuff too, so if everything works fine, i will have just exactly the skybox i always wanted

So thanks again,
sure will be credits given.

[Revelation]

I planned to tamper with my skybox anyway: i will try to make those nasty seams disappear at the edges of the sky textures (see what happens when i render them only to 510*510 and extend to the correct 512 by duplicating the pixel-rows and columns at the edges)

Guess you're talking about Terragen or something? In that case, render in 512*512, place the six textures in your skybox normally, and then scale them up by a value of 1.01. Then move each texture by one unit to the directions (U and V) where a boarder is still visible.
That should do the trick.