Decals and -bounce

[jal_]

I found out q3map2 has a bug at -bounce when using decals. The thing is, transparent surfaces are bouncing light as normal surfaces, so a decal placed on a floor/wall is bouncing light, but the wall is also bouncing it. This makes walls with the decals emit huge amounts of light, almost like a light shader.

I discovered it in this small map section which had walls with decals very close and looking to each other. There's no light entity in there, all the light you see is from bouncing the sky light in the decals.

[lvlshot]http://www.foopics.com/showfull/5234f263dca52fc8f972808250e49992[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]http://www.foopics.com/showfull/3d63c4c54becb1d5f3c251b432c1b40b[/lvlshot]

I fixed it my copy of q3map2 (by skipping all surfaceparm trans surfaces when bouncing), and also sent the fix to netradiant, but, I think you can avoid it in current q3map2 builds by setting a very low bounce value in the decal shader.

[Hipshot]

q3map_bounceScale...

[obsidian]

^ This.

But good to know that you need to set this for decals.

[jal_]

q3map_bounceScale...

by setting a very low bounce value in the decal shader.

But good to know that you need to set this for decals.

Decals are the worst case, but you should set it to everything transparent. Specially if you are one of those guys who choose to fill in white the alphamasked part of the textures (that part will be bounced too). I try to think in cases where the transparent surface should be bounced and they are all too forced to really happen. The cases that would make more sense would actually be decal cases where the decal is mostly opaque, but not if the wall is also bounced.

[monaster]

Decals are the worst case, but you should set it to everything transparent. Specially if you are one of those guys who choose to fill in white the alphamasked part of the textures (that part will be bounced too). I try to think in cases where the transparent surface should be bounced and they are all too forced to really happen. The cases that would make more sense would actually be decal cases where the decal is mostly opaque, but not if the wall is also bounced.

Thanks for letting everybody know, that solved one very old problem I've had in the past.