Light_dynamics!

[blacksmith123]

I've been mapping for hl2 and half-life for a few years, and I'm pretty familiar with the workings of hammer, but for some reason, light_dynamics absolutely REFUSE to work in any and all of my maps. I've never really felt like bothering with them, but recently it's just started to tick me off. No matter what setting I try or value I put in for the light, it has absolutely NO effect on lighting in-game. If I have just a box room with nothing but a light_dynamic and a player start, it just runs in fullbright and doesn't even seem to read that there's a light in the room. Please help!

[haymaker]

Are you using Valve's compile tools, or third party ?

Other than that, perhaps your hammer setup configs got changed somehow ?

[blacksmith123]

Are you using Valve's compile tools, or third party ?

Other than that, perhaps your hammer setup configs got changed somehow ?

I use hammer's compile (I've been trying to find a good 3rd party one, do you know of any?). What configuration settings might have gotten changed?

[Slackiller]

http://www.slackiller.com/New%20Tuts/dyn_light.html

[haymaker]

Stick with Valve's 3 programs; I used Adam Mckern's versions for awhile, and while faster, they caused errors in prop_statics crashing the game.
http://www.ammahls.com/ ..scroll down to "tools". If you don't mind changing _statics to _physics_override for dev purposes then go ahead n use them. I found the lighting somewhat brighter with them too.

For your setup parameters , just a shot in the dark, go through this
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Hammer_Manual_Configuration

Have you checked/updated vid card drivers?

[samsaber]

The CST tools are outdated, they cause problems and do not support HDR. I reported the errors i found to the creator.

[blacksmith123]

My graphics card is top o' the line and all of my drivers are perfectly up to date, and I compared my setup with the one on the VERC site and it matches up perfectly... it seems that the light doesn't even render, it affects absolutely nothing in-game. The only time it ever did anything was when I had a swinging lamp fixture set up (using a phys_spring to give the rope slight bounciness) and as it swung everything lit up except for a spot where the light would cast if it was working, which was pitch-dark. If any of the Valve team have any idea what might be going wrong, I would greatly appreciate some advice.

[Nicadeamas]

.
I'm not the expert but I'll try and help ya.
If you PM me your Email, I'll send you a map I made with dynaics that do work.
If it works on your system we will know there is nothing wrong with your system.

[WildCat_ZA]

http://www.slackiller.com/New%20Tuts/dyn_light.html

I carefully did this tutorial to the letter in order to test the light_dynamic entity out. What I found was that it didn't work if I followed only the steps in the tutorial. I had to fiddle around with some other settings before it worked. It seems that the light_dynamic entity is not a very user-friendly entity to work with.

Here are some pointers:

1. Make sure that the "Maximum distance" key value is high enough for the light to actually reach the surface that it must cast onto (in this case, the floor). If you select the light_dynamic entity, the "Maximum distance" key value will be visually portrayed in the 3D window as a yellow wireframe sphere around the entity. Take into account that the light could swing and, as a result, increase the distance from the light_dynamic and the surface that it's pointing at while swinging.

2. The default value for "Light brightness" is "0". Leaving it at this setting gave me a very weak light. At first, I tried setting it to "128" but, when I ran the map, it gave an error in the console saying that the light_dynamic's brightness was only allowed to be between -64 and 64 (When I shot the light fixture the game crashed). This scale seems quite counter-intuitive to me but I managed to work out that reasonable values are between "6" and "8" for a bright spotlight.

3. From my tests, it seems that "Inner (bright) angle" and "Outer (fading) angle" do not affect this entity. To make the spotlights size larger, you need to change the value of "Spotlight end radius". The default is "80" but I found "128" to be a better size.

[blacksmith123]

Hahaha thanks so much! I'm giddy. I parented it to the hanging lamp and it worked fantastically, albeit I found 8 to be a little bit too bright. I've also parented an env_sprite and a point_spotlight and it looks great. VERC really should have had a better tutorial on how to use these picky things. Also, after a lot of frustration, I found that you have to have at least one light in the map that is NOT dynamic, otherwise it will run in fullbright.

[zyklus]

Here's describing light_dynamic: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Intermediate_Lighting#Static_vs._Dynamic

By the way, here's a great tutorial on how to create light and how to manage them:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Lighting

[chilledsanity]

I'm having a different problem with dynamic lights. I'm using a lot for a particular scene I'm doing (performance is not an issue) and some of them simply won't show. However I've noticed that if I delete some of them, others will come on, like the engine is implementing some sort of artificial cap on the number of dynamic lights I can have. Is there some way to override this?