ya....well...like silk said they are going to be blurry due to our lightmap scale limitation but your right I have not been using any of the advanced prop_static shadow commands on any of my maps, and yes they can be updated using them.
so this is with the advanced prop_shadow commands and with the palm texture changed from fullbright setting to a regular shadowing texture. OLD Now
Isn't the entire map darker though? Looking at the ground the light_environment is set quite a lot darker and possibly a bit less saturated ? In comparison this will darken the trees even more than with the shadow commands alone.
I did not change the light environment at all, and just for safety's sake I just checked the light environment against the older VMFs of palmbay, they are exactly the same EDIT: one thought is maybe taking the palm tree textures off full bright settings might be making the HDR tone off the bloom a bit, I dont really know what kind of effect the full bright textures might have been having on HDR. No, anymore and I'll crash the the map compile, I already increased the lightmaps by 70% on this one vrs previous and nearly doubled the file size. You is already at your limit.
Well seeing as how I actually haven't done a recompile to duststorm and the only thing different is it is not using fullbright textures for the palm trees I checked the difference and cant really see any. However looking back at old dustorm pics it looks like my game has gotten much darker in general. OLD pic New without fullbright palms New with fullbright palms so, mmm, might just be my machine? anyone wana load up the palmbay on the Beta empires/SVN? and tell me if it looks darker in general for you?
If no one did it before then, remind me of this in a day or two Keef. Before i'm gonna go mess with empires again, i want to install everything else on my new pc. Also, did you only use the light/shadow parameters for static trees, or other parameters as well? Settings for props shouldn't affect the rest of the map. Cause in for example the tropical island map there really is a lot less light everywhere, including the skybox itself (the clouds and air), which is kinda strange.
-hdr -final -lights empireslights -TextureShadows -StaticPropLighting -StaticPropPolys -game $gamedir $path\$file thought to be honest I dont need the empireslights.rad in there, I did not include the palmtrees in the lights.rad for their alpha, they didn't turn black enough or cause voids of shadow on the ground.
Very odd Also since i'm on a new pc i can't really compare a map to before, cause even the exact same maps look a bit different now. Personally i'd do some quicktests with the cordon tool and increasing the brightness untill the ground of the island and the air matches that of the old map. Hopefully that makes the trees bright green in the sun and shaded on the other side Edit: How did you fix the fullbright, and why did they have that in the first place I never realised why they looked so strange untill you mentioned it Looking back at it i don't understand how i didn't notice it https://dl.dropbox.com/u/234836/mapping/emp_arid/buildspace_3.jpg
They were all using "UnlitGeneric" texture type, NFI why that was done cept maybe to squeeze 1 or 2 fps out of the game, totally not worth it though. They look way better using "VertexLitGeneric" I might even switch tropicvendetta back to these with how they look now, wouldn't be as much FPS rape with these ones as the ones I'm currently using on it. I'm currently compiling tropic with the light intensity upped from 150 to 250, we'll see how it goes.
So I'm more suspecting the latest steam patch as things go on here, this screen is with brightness at 250(from 150) And this one is the same thing but without any tonemap controller being used. This used to be without the tonemap controller and using such bright sand the glare would be almost unbearable. But It is actually functioning at a decent level without the tonemap controller. Did valve update their HDR function? maybe I dont know, I just know all my maps with tonemap controllers are quite a bit darker now.
It looks a lot better now I did type something about still not being convinced about the trees just as i never found a good way to do the pines, but then i looked for palm tree images on google and they were much darker shaded as i thought they would be.
