How to fix an irregular lighting problem?

[EmeraldTiger]

I`m now going with a "nighttime" theme for my WIP map Training Day (now in third beta) and reducing my ambient lighting to 10 has significantly improved the atmosphere of the map. Unfortunately, it came with this side effect:

trainingday_screen1.jpg

Yikes! Definitely not what I want. Well, I do love having shadows cast as it does have a great positive effect on visuals, but the way it is so distorted and messy, it makes people want to puke more than they want to go "wow!"

What would your solution be to turn this aesthetic disaster into a graphic masterpiece? Can I potentially use an invisible shader and lay it right below the girders casting the shadows?

[deqer]

i think it looks good. players will not be looking at that.

either lighten the shadows, or put a caulk brush over top of the grates.

[nick lol]

You could use a func_group and then set _lightmapscale for that floor to a high value

[obsidian]

Where is the lighting coming from? Directly above?

What's the primary light source? Sun? Point lights? Surface lights?

What's causing those pixelated shadows? Is it from the scaffolding texture?

[EmeraldTiger]

Where is the lighting coming from? Directly above?

What's the primary light source? Sun? Point lights? Surface lights?

What's causing those pixelated shadows? Is it from the scaffolding texture?

1. Above (over the girders, you can`t see them in this shot but their shadows hint at their existence)

2. Sun (sky shader with light surfaceparm)

3. Not sure...

[Silicone_Milk]

Hand-paint your own lightmap for that room

[Eraser]

You could use a func_group and then set _lightmapscale for that floor to a high value

I think this is the only correct answer.
The lighting would look great if the shadows are higher res.

[obsidian]

I suspect you are using an old sky shader, I suggest you swap it out for newer Q3Map2 sky shaders. Faster compiles, 10x the quality, radiosity, penumbra, tweakable to your heart's content.

http://robotrenegade.com/q3map2/docs/sh ... aders.html

The problem with old sky shaders is that it does a perfectly parallel light which stencils any alphashadows directly below. Real skies have penumbras. Q3Map2 skies can also do filtering (start with no filtering and then slowing increase it) which can blur out ugly splotches.

High resolution lightmaps are cool, but internal lightmaps are limited to 128x128 luxel pages, so when you have a large surface area like that floor, it'll be downsized as the lightmap will be forced to fit the floor surface area. External lightmaps forced at larger page sizes will work but it's rather complicated with a few other can of worms you'll have to deal with. You'll have lots of experimenting to do.