Trouble achieving total darkness

[CaptainPoopface]

I need pitch-black darkness, where nothing is visible outside of a flashlight beam. I've used Uberlightmap Tool to make the lightmap as dark as possible; I've swapped in a dark sky. It's still not nearly dark enough.

I am making a map out of custom blocs. It's a self-contained secret haven of privacy where no outside light can filter in. I experience some weird lighting behavior - when I spawn inside my bloc fortress, the biped has a strange default lighting. If I step outside and make contact with the BSP, then I become much darker. But still not dark enough, and it's very easy to see everything else.

Before BSP contact:


After BSP contact:


Still not dark enough. Sucks.



It's the death of a couple of cool mod ideas if I can't get complete darkness. Are there values in the mode, bloc, or scnr tag that determine how much light an object reflects? If the blocs would act like the BSP with the lightmap, I think I'd be fine.

[foxfanatic23I7]

Here, use this tutorial, and edit your lightmap in photoshop. http://forums.halomods.com/viewtopic.ph ... 32&t=56311

[CaptainPoopface]

That tutorial is difficult to understand without the pictures, but from what I gather, it's a way to specifically edit each palette in the lightmap instead of editing them all at once with Uberlightmap Tool.

I don't think it's a ltmp problem. The lightmap seems to apply to the BSP and things in contact with it (it looks perfect when I'm on the BSP). I think there is some default setting about blocs or models that determines how they reflect light or light up the things in contact with them.

For example, here I am not touching the blue base gate.


Now touching the blue base gate. It gives the biped a bluish light, independent of the lightmap.





I think this is the key. It's the cause of the old green mach problems, these reflexives with pointers that don't point to anything when you build the mach into another map. The blue and red base gates have settings to indicate that they give off a blue or red glow to objects that touch them. I need to figure out how to adjust what color the light is, and put those chunks on my bloc models.

I think neodos is the only active researcher who can figure it out though...


EDIT:
How did T Beezie get this yellow lighting effect from the gondolas? This was almost 2 years ago.


His lightmap looks really funky, too:

[xzodia]

If I recall correctly the yellow was just the way it happened and he kept it cause it looked good...

The pointers and chunk counts your looking at only appear as numbers because of the special plugin I wrote for the fixing green machs tut by neodos. Its actually 2 Reflexives...

[neodos]

And you can setup lightning proprieties on that, but you should also check the mach tag there's a bitmask- flag about if the mach uses lightmap, if you still have a prob try changing the shader or get an older plugin of mode tag which includes the lightning reflexives on mode tag.

[Argon]

There is a darkness value in the sky tag that will help you darken it alot more.

[CaptainPoopface]

If I recall correctly the yellow was just the way it happened and he kept it cause it looked good...

Yeah, from reading something xHeadshotmastax wrote, the cable_room BSP gives off a gold/yellow glow, and that seems to be the one T Beezie used.

There is a darkness value in the sky tag that will help you darken it alot more.

I don't have the darkness value labeled in my plugin, and I think it's XZodia's latest. Can you post a screenshot, or post your sky plugin?

[Argon]

When I get home, yes.

[neodos]

If I recall correctly the yellow was just the way it happened and he kept it cause it looked good...

Yeah, from reading something xHeadshotmastax wrote, the cable_room BSP gives off a gold/yellow glow, and that seems to be the one T Beezie used.

As i said these 2 model reflexives give self illumination to the models, get an older plugin that has it.

[Argon]

Its called Bloom Overide Gamma Power. Any value over 1 will make it darker.
It also effects HUD.

[CaptainPoopface]

Bloom Override Gamma Power does some odd things, including making the entire screen very dark. But it's more like putting a blanket over the TV than making the map dark. And it gets bypassed completely in multiplayer. The effect I'm after is a very dark room - all the shader detail is there to be seen when a beam of light hits it.

I've tried changing the lightmap-related boxes in the bitmask for the blocs, but they either make the blocs invisible or freeze the map. I also don't see any difference in the bitmasks between the containment base gate or gondola, and other blocs/machs that don't seem to have self-illumination.

I've checked all my versions of Entity, from Alpha to 1.6 UE, and none of the mode plugins have lighting reflexives labeled. Where would I get one of these old plugins? Are you sure these reflexives were identified? It seems like people would have solved the green mach problem sooner if the lighting reflexives were known.

[TroyMac1ure]

I've done the same idea with Warlock. I still have some light, but if no flashlight is on it's *extremely* difficult to see someone. I notice that I can see across the map, but not near me. I think it's a light given off by fog. You can try checking that as well.

I've been playing with the lighting stuff for the past few weeks and starting to understand it a little better. I'll look at Warlock again and see if I can tell what I did. I just kept darkening stuff until it was pretty much black Then added light grenades, BR flashlight & a bright red glowing oddball (bright enough to see when it pulsates on).

I don't post alot, but play around quite a bit. If I figure out how to post my map, I'll do that.

[CaptainPoopface]

It's easy to make darkness on any BSP. The problem here is making it work in a map made entirely of custom blocs and machs. For some reason, the biped maintains some kind of default lighting. The lightmap seems to be applied only when the biped is in direct contact with the BSP.

I have used Warlock as well, with the weapons from my Lab Raiders mod. It's a great map for a fight in the dark. I also cannot figure out how to get rid of the sky fog though. I've swapped the sky, nulled the weather, and nulled all BSP shaders with "fog" in them. The sky is still too light. But it works well enough.

[TheArrogantWorms]

ah

i know now

its global lighting gldf? tag

anyways if you ever null a lightmap you will notice there are still shadows and crap

this is because there is a "global" lighting througout the map wich casts light on everything and generates basic shadowing (does not cast shadows but instead makes the planes on the bsp darker lighter) that's why lightmaps are used, to create shadows cast from the bsp itself.

so basically once you jump off the bsp, it's no longer sampling from the bsp lightmap and is using the global lighting

look into the global lighting tag and I am confident you will find your answer.