hey guys im making my map with a rather similar lighting effect to donner but was wondering the best way to go about this, anyone got any links to good tut's that explain good colours to diffuse with and where to place lgihts (light env..)

oh and if anyone knows of good 'deuce and a half' and 'streetlight' models plz supply the appropriate linkage :D

as always your help is much appreciated.

If you search this board for "light" you get alot of good topics.

Here is a good one: http://www.dayofdefeat.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9923&highlight

not really what im after

Originally posted by Kehldon
If you search this board for "light" you get alot of good topics.


Nah I guess searching yourself is too much to ask for right from you... :|

random why don't you do like everybody else for the lights: sit down and practice. No matter where you place the light_env (as long as it is not covered by a brush).
You'll find the deuce here (http://www.dayofdefeat.net/forums/images/top_search.gif) ;)

If your really ... really stuck then just use ripent.

heres a hint:
To practice with lightning in your map, pick a little (and i mean little, like a house and some grass) part of your map and copy-paste it to a new map. then surround all with a hollow skybox, place a light environment and adjust its values. Remember to change the map's skyname so you dont get this:
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/sbeatriz/badsky.jpg
Compile with rad on, thisll take less than 20 seconds on my machine... dunno yours. Anyway, when you got a good setting on direct and diffuse lightning, apply the values to your map, and compile. If you dont get the effect you were looking for, you gotta keep trying on your small test map.

As for donner I remember that Xerent said that he never used diffuse lighting on his maps. Overall it depends on what shadows you want to have (brighter diffuse - softer, darker one - darker and sharper shadows) My advice is to set it to either some shade of grey/white or darker shade of lighting env. settings.

And then again, some of us really like harsh shadows and dark hiding places...so it all depends. I agree with marianopicco though, make a small map with something like a house and a few bushes or something and then mess around with lighting on that until you get what you are looking for. BTW, take time to write down the settings of other lighting schemes you create while you go because it's really hard to remember what you did sometimes. =)

Also, one tip for ya...with nems batch compiler (I'm still using 1.1.4b) you can do some great lighting things. Here's a few of them:

Bounce: I use from 4-6 - this makes the lighting look more natural and even in my experience and prevents shadows from being too dark. On dark maps this helps a lot if you don't want areas where players can't see at all.

Ambient R G B: I almost always use this with 0.001 or 0.002 (it doesn't seem like much but trust me, it makes a big difference). This will make sure that no area is pitch black. This again is a good tool for dark maps. It makes them playable and yet...dark and scary. =)

Anyhow, yeah, there are a lot of good tutorials. I'd definately check the links at http://www.karljones.com/halflife/almanac.asp

Monk