Models appear dark in well lit areas

[DVersiga]

I'm making a map for Elite Force and for some reason, in an area that is pretty brightly lit, the models appear dark. Also, when the player model enters this area, it becomes darker than it was before. Anyone know what could be causing this problem? The models in the rest of the map are fine, it's just this one area. Almost like the player crossing some imaginary line that makes everything in it darker, yet the lightmap displayed on the brushes from just outside the area into the next area is seamless.

Thanks ahead of time.

P.S. The phenomenon can be seen in the video here, at about 0.24 seconds. Keep an eye on the gun model and you'll see what I'm talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/iHiVOFoJlrc

[spookmineer]

I've never seen it localised to a specific part of a map...

Too bad it's an rpg map, then again it's still EF
It still looks good.

[kaustic]

Although it would be nice to see some screenshots from the editor because I have no idea where you
put the light entities but it looks like to me that the player model is casting a shadow on the weapon.
It happens in a couple of other places in the vid just not to the extent of it in that one area.

[VolumetricSteve]

I think you could kinda shortcut the issue and add more LightJunior entities to the places where your models are too dark. You could also tinker with -bouncegrid at compile time in conjuction with -bounce 2 or -bounce 3.

[obsidian]

Nice shaders. Isn't there supposed to be a table with a console on it in the hallway where the black shadow appears? /nerd

Indeed, something wrong with the lightgrid. There are a few ways you can tweak it:

• worldspawn > _mingridlight - sets global floor value for lightgrid. It either takes a single value or R G B values, I don't recall (please let me know if you find out).
• worldspawn > gridsize X Y Z - sets lightgrid "resolution". Q3Map2 may be averaging out other parts of the map outside the boundaries of the hallway, totalling to values lower than desired. Use power of 2 values, default is 128 128 256. Warning, very small values will increase compile time and on larger maps could overrun the grid size limit (forgot what the value was, 128 grids along each axis or something). You can control maximum calculation area with the lightgrid shader included with Q3Map2.
• lightJunior entity - similar to a light but affects only the lightgrid. It'll artificially change the lightgrid value of the volume it is sitting in.

[DVersiga]

Argh...

So I did some research on lightJuniors and came across an old discussion with a well known modder for Elite Force having the same problems. He corrected them using lightJuniors. GTKRadiant, while editing for Elite Force, does not have lightJunior listed in the drop-down entity list. He got it to work by simply renaming a light entity's classname to lightJunior.

I tried the same thing and put lightJuniors all around the hallway I'm having the issue in, but everything remained unchanged. Any ideas?

(Elite Force modding is pretty much dead, just to explain why I'm posting here)

Also, I've been wondering. Is it okay to post screenshots of my EF project on these boards? Or is this a QIII only forum?

[VolumetricSteve]

Go nuts. At this point in time, this forum exists, as far as I know, because some of the people here will never die, and Quake Live brought a lot of attention back to the name. I don't think people are too concerned about the content. Hell, they even let me post.

Strange about your light juniors not working...what version of q3map2 are you using? Also, if you could, open your map up in notepad, do a search for lightJunior and see what comes back, just to make sure it's in there the right way.

[obsidian]

Post away.

Make sure you are compiling with Q3Map2 2.5.16 (download link in my signature). Don't replace the existing Q3Map in your Radiant installation, the libraries are probably different and it'll break stuff. Extract it somewhere else and execute with a batch file or other front-end interface program like Q3Map2Toolz.

You can also edit your entities.def or entities.ent to add Q3Map2 definitions. This one is for Q3, but you should be able to copy the relevant bits to ET with a comparison program.
http://radiant.robotrenegade.com/downlo ... as_0.2.zip

[DVersiga]

Strange. I made a small map with a simple unlit room with a single NPC and a single lightJunior, and the NPC appeared properly lit. Took out the lightJunior, and the model appeared much darker. So I know I can get lightJuniors to work while modding Elite Force.

Tried again in my map where I'm having the problem and, yep, you guessed it. No change. Frustrating.

I'll figure it out eventually. I hate getting stuck like this on a map that takes a while to compile. Trial and error can take hours.

Another note: I copied out just the problematic hallway into a new map so it was much smaller. Compiled, ran, and the problem didn't exist. I'm guessing that I'm pushing the lightmap limits of EF with the main map? Which is strange because it isn't even that big. 3000 brushes or so, which is far below the average stock EF level brush count.

[VolumetricSteve]

now that IS strange....sometimes when friends of mine have weird issues like that, they just copy the whole map, and paste it into a new map. Couldn't hurt *shrug*

if not that...I strongly suggest compiling with -bouncegrid and -bounce 2 or -bounce 3, this should cause your lightgrid points to receive more values based on more environmental data.

also, when you added in a lightJunior, what value did you have it's brightness at?

[DVersiga]

SOLVED!!

I did what Obsidian suggested earlier and changed the worldspawn>gridsize to a higher number (I just chose 256x256x512, double the default) and now everything's working great. Wish I would've tried that first thing this morning rather than wasting my whole afternoon on faulty lightJuniors Thanks, Obsidian!

[obsidian]

...or something of smaller values (which what I was suggesting) but whatever works.

Also from ydnar himself:

Lightjuniors should only be used as a last resort. If the lightgrid is too dark in that part of the map, check the following:

- Is there empty void below the floor? The lightgrid might be sampling from there.
- Is the gridsize key too large? If it's too large, then the lightgrid sampling will be too crude and no amount of lights in the vicinity will help.

y