It's also amazingly annoying, I would much prefer it if the engine worked with tris rather than polygons.
That explains something. I had my map all nicely fit together so I could subdivide the whole cave system together. It all worked fine, saved, reloaded, and it redesigned this one complex part where I used a couple of weird sloping trapezoid shaped pieces to make a box slope in 2 directions. :/
It looks like correct lighting ("highlight" that originated from outside the room). Try more light bounces and/or higher lightmap resolution (lower number).
Isn't there something like lights.rad in main directory that has to be correctly set for light textures to work? The whole idea of light emitting brush that isn't a light is kind of weird.
98.9% probability he has a LEAK, which causes vrad to forego radiosity on faces that haven't been directly lit. FYI, the correct fix is to close the leak, not to shine a spotlight on the ceiling. It's mostly used for non-point lights, though back before Episode 1 it felt more like a grid of small omni-lights, which wasn't encouraging.
That's because it is a grid of small omni lights, each texture defined in the lights.rad spawns a light in front of it with predefined values, and it does this each time the texture is repeated on the face, which is why there is that 16x16 light texture, it's designed to make a surface which emits light all across it. The problem in the image appears to be simply that you aren't using the right kind of light, if you use just a spotlight it won't look very good, add in a point light as well to simulate scattering.
And the winner is... Demented (Entity outside of the map). Of course I was just testing you all, and would never be dumb enough to not check for a leak. e: no scratch that, tons of leaks. I get rid of one and another pops up. I don't even know what the problem is with this one.
you should try compiling the map in a box that is closed in. With cordons or just put a proper box around your map. The fact that it isn't hit by direct light also means that your ceiling will be nearly as dark when you compile it anyhow :/
yeah its been fixed for awhile (too lazy to edit) it wasnt a entity or anything. just had to delete and replace some brushes.
I started learning Hammer recently and this thread has shown me what NOT to do. It needs a sticky. Thank you, all. Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from. -- Al Franken
