A picture is worth 1,000 words, so here are
quite a few pictures to show what difference
lighting can do for your level. I won't be
showing you how to do lighting in this particular
video, but by the end of it you should have
a better understanding of lighting in the
Source engine and how it works.
[CUBEMAPS] By the way, if you're getting this
problem, it's nothing to do with the lighting-
it's to do with the cubemaps in your level.
Look up my tutorial on that instead.
[LIGHTMAPS] If you choose the '3D Lightmap
Grid View' in Hammer, your map will turn into
a load of squares. When you compile your map,
it calculates how bright each of these squares
is. Obviously, the more squares there are,
the longer it takes to compile your map...
and the larger your map's filesize will be.
You can change the lightmap scale in Hammer.
The number shown is the number of units across
each square is. Smaller values mean more detailed
shadows, but your map's filesize will greatly
increase, and it can cause strange artifacts
and problems, particularly if done across
a large area. Before compiling your map you
have a choice of which setting to set RAD
to. If you set it to 'No', your map will have
no lighting. If you set it to 'Fast', it will
have 'bad lighting' and if you set it to 'Normal',
it will have normal lighting. personally I
can't see much of a difference between fast
and normal, and I've done a couple of tests.
here are my results. However, the general
concensus is that normal is better, so I suggest
you just put up with the wait and get some
one to make you a sandwich.
[RADIOSITY] Light go round corners, but it
can bounce off surfaces. Here is an extreme
example of a brightly lit orange wall making
the shaded wall glow orange. Newer games can
do this in realtime, but for Source, it's
all calculated when compiling your map.
[REAL-TIME LIGHTING] Because Source calculates
lighting when you compile your map, it doesn't
need to do so in-game, leading to higher framerates
than in games where lighting is calculated
in real-time. However, because of this you
can't attach (or parent) lights to moving
objects in Hammer, and the number of flashing
or toggleable lights you can have in a particular
areas is limited. There are certain lights
that are dynamic to a degree, but they don't
tend to look that good and may lead to problems.
Here you can see examples of point_spotlight
and env_projectedtexture entities.
[WARNINGS] Obviously the best way to learn
is to do it yourself. However, I'm going to
give you some advice. Putting loads of different
coloured lights in a room ends up looking
horrible and messy, and some times, the fewer
lights there are, the better. The aim of lighting
isn't to light everything up like a Christmas
tree- it's to make maps look better more realistic
by having darker areas. It's also quite artistic.
[COLOUR THEORY] The general idea is that certain
colours look nice together. For some examples,
try watching films like the latest Harry Potters.
Compare them to the older ones and you'll
find that the lighting is more uniform, with
entire scenes being in one or two main colours.
This can be used to make things look more
stylised and professional. Deus Ex: Human
Revolution is an extreme example of this.
Colour correction is a large topic and there
are ways of changing the lighting in your
level much like you would when editing a frag
video in a video editing program. However,
for now, I'm just going to say that you should
try and pick a suitable colour scheme when
selecting your textures. Green is sickly,
red is for anger or alert. You can also contrast
colours. You'll find a lot of movie posters
use blue and orange.
[CONCLUSION] Hopefully this video has helped
you to question colours, study shadows and
has given you a justification for watching
Harry Potter. Don't forget to point out every
interesting shadow you see to your friends
and how real life could look better if everything
was yellow. Your friends will really thank
you for it later.
