Lighting Basics

A Simple Light Entity (Page 1 of 3) by satchmo · 51,270 views · comments

You are already familiar with the simple light entity. In fact, there are two of them in our practice map. But there are more interesting things we can do with the light entity than what we've done so far. So open up firstmap again and we'll have some fun with lights.

Changing the Color of the Light

Locate the light entity in the smaller room from the 3D view. Select it by double-clicking on it in the 3D view. The "Object Properties" dialog box should pop up for the light entity.



Click on the property "Brightness", and the default value should be "255 255 255 200". The first three numbers correspond to the RGB value of the color of the light, and the fourth number represents brightness. I don't know about you, but guessing the RGB values of a specific color isn't my forte. Fortunately, Valve is kind enough to provide us with a nifty tool to pick out the exact color we want.

Click on the "Pick color" button, and this color selection box should pop up.



Click anywhere in the color wheel to pick up the color you want. For our purposes, we'll pick a RGB color of "255 255 0". Click on the OK button to confirm your selection and "Apply" the setting. Notice the color of your light entity in the 3D view is now the same color you selected.

Adjusting the Brightness of a Light

As I mentioned before, the fourth number in the "Brightness" property determines how bright your light is going to be. The default is 200, and it already provides a moderately bright light source. I don't often increase the brightness, unless I am working with outdoor lighting (with light_environment). More frequently, I tone down the brightness to create a more moody and shadowy feeling in sections of my map. Play around with the setting in your spare time. We'll set the brightness to 150 for now.

Once we're done with changing the light setting, we can close the dialog box by clicking on "Cancel". Just make sure you "Apply" the changes first.

Adding a Light Fixture Model

One of the most common offense beginner mappers make is putting lights in their maps without placing any obvious light fixtures. I call this phenomenon orphaned lights. It looks unprofessional, and who wants to be an unprofessional mapper?

We'll discuss models in more details later, but let's put in a light fixture now. Select the Entity Tool first (Shift-E), and pick "prop_static" from the entity selection list. Click in the 3D view, right above the light entity. Switch to the Select Tool (Shift-S), then double-click on the prop_static to open up its properties dialog box. Open the model viewer by clicking on the World Model property, and click on "Browse...". Double-click the props_c17 folder in the model browser. Let's pick out the model "models/props_c17/lamp_bell_on.mdl" for now.

If necessary, adjust the position of the model so that it's directly above the light entity in the small room. In addition, we'll need to move the position of the light entity up a bit so it's closer to the light model. This will make the light more realistic. Let's save our map before going further.



For most mappers, however, we rarely use the point-based light entity alone to create a lighting effect. Usually, it's used in conjunction with other lighting entities to make the lighting as realistic as possible. We'll discuss how it's done in section three of this tutorial.