doctormidnight on 1/3/2005 at 07:51
Wondering if someone could take a look at this small map and tell me why the two large street lamps have such strange lighting properties. Mainly I wonder why Garretts light gem lights up when he's on the outside, but goes dark when he's fairly close to the light.
(
http://www.sherlockholmesarmy.org/lighttest.unr) (I think this is the only file necessary?)
Also I was wondering if someone could explain the basics of making a door that actually works. I've looked at the tutorials that (sort of) have to do with doors, but none of them really seem to deal explicitly with creating a selectable door.
Oh and one other thing: am I correct in assuming that every building that you want to have a working door has to be created from scratch, and can't be one of the static mesh things?
doctormidnight on 1/3/2005 at 10:26
Not really, that's about putting a lock on a door, I'm trying to just make any door that can be opened.
Mandrake on 1/3/2005 at 10:35
Quote Posted by doctormidnight
Wondering if someone could take a look at this small map and tell me why the two large street lamps have such strange lighting properties. Mainly I wonder why Garretts light gem lights up when he's on the outside, but goes dark when he's fairly close to the light.
(
http://www.sherlockholmesarmy.org/lighttest.unr) (I think this is the only file necessary?)
Awesome! You're the first person to post a map-in-progress to download, as far as I know, and for slow taffers like me who aren't very good at geometry design (ok, hopeless) this gives me something simple yet cool to play around with :)
I wish more people would do this - yes I'm sure all these early experiments may be pretty simple and perhaps some of the well established mappers might be "embarased" by their initial tinkerings, but it would certainly accelerate the pace of learning compared to just posting about it.
For example I was experimenting mainly with AI's recently and was planning to build a bigger environment than the silly two boxes joined by a walkway map I was using before, and now I have somewhere I can put them...
Anyway, to your question, I can see the basic problem - you have a single lightsource centrally above your lamp post, and from walking around the area and looking at the light gem, its obvious that the three light fixtures are casting a "shadow" on the brightness level that the light gem goes by, but (this is a guess, I havn't checked the properties yet) you probably have the lamp post set to not cast dynamic shadows, thus you dont see a shadow on the ground ?
My guess is that there is probably a property that can be applied to the lamp post mesh to make it totally transperant to light for lighting an area (including the lightgem) while not itself looking transperant....
I'll have a fiddle around and see if I can figure it out...
Squid3d on 1/3/2005 at 10:55
add a hardpoint offset property to your lighting section and set it to -100 in the z axis.
As Mandrake said, the slamp is casting shadows because the actual light is above the sMesh.
:)
Mandrake on 1/3/2005 at 11:01
Quote Posted by Squid3d
add a hardpoint offset property to your lighting section and set it to -100 in the z axis.
As Mandrake said, the slamp is casting shadows because the actual light is above the sMesh.
:)
Wouldn't that put the source of light inside the post stem itself ? What does that do to the casting of light ?
I just looked at the white streetlamp in stonemarket plaza (which admitedly is a different kind) and it didn't have a hardpoint offset attribute.
Mandrake on 1/3/2005 at 11:11
Ok, that hardpoint offset is really weird.
I tried -50, and what it seems to do is to move the source of the light for shadow casting purposes in the renderer, but NOT for light casting for the lightgem.
So now what I get is no visible shadows on the ground, but a visible shadow of the top light fixtures being projected UPWARDS towards nearby walls, as the light source is obviously below the fixtures now, but the lightgem STILL goes dark on the same place on the street as where the shadows were before the hardpoint offset! :confused:
It seems that both "CastShadows" (under render) and "hardpoint offset" (under lighting) are both only "cosmetic" properties, and only affect how the shadow rendering is done, but don't affect light propogation as far as the light gem is concerned...
Squid3d on 1/3/2005 at 11:22
it doesn't affect it anyway that i can see and if it did/does then setting the innerRadius so the rays cast start from an offset point (ie, ouside the geometry)of the lights cone should fix it.
Mandrake on 1/3/2005 at 11:25
Quote Posted by Squid3d
it doesn't affect it anyway that i can see and if it did/does then setting the innerRadius so the rays cast start from an offset point (ie, ouside the geometry)of the lights cone should fix it.
Ok,
so can we just adjust the position of the light slightly so its in the centre of the bunch of three fixtures, and then increase the innerRadius so that it forms a sphere slightly larger than the physical size of the three fixtures ?
That way the source of the light is as close as possible to correct as can be approximated with a single light source, but no shadow is cast by the fixtures ? Where is the innerRadius property under ?
Squid3d on 1/3/2005 at 11:27
at -50 you are still picking up the shadowing from the static mesh.
it works predictably here, shadows are fine etc
