qolelis on 13/11/2014 at 14:44
Is it somehow possible to make object shadows produced by sunlight affect the lightgem? I have added Object System->Immobile and Renderer->Runtime Object Shadow (and set them both to true) to the objects and while a shadow is cast, the lightgem still isn't affected. I also tried both single and quad sunlight, just in case, but that didn't change anything.
I have two islands surrounded by a high number of cliffs and to save cells I built the cliffs from objects. I didn't want to close off large areas with artificial barriers, so the player is allowed to swim around most of the cliffs and, naturally, I would like for the cliffs to cast proper shadows that the player can hide in, but it seems that this isn't possible the standard way.
I have a few ideas on how to accomplish something similar:
* Set the lightgem manually when the player enters certain areas, but that would most likely be a binary thing (and would require lots of tedious editing for something that might not work well enough in the end, anyway).
* Hide simple, solid terrain inside the cliffs (or even build the entire cliff from solids), but since my cell count is already pretty high, that might not be possible, except maybe for the most critical areas.
* Create an artificial sunlight source, but that would probably look pretty odd.
fibanocci on 13/11/2014 at 14:50
I simulate the light-gem affecting shadow in sunlight at objects with a spotlight (light has to have a minus sign -2500/-4000). It takes much time to compile that but the result is pretty good.
qolelis on 13/11/2014 at 16:18
Aha, thanks for the tip; that was news to me; I'm trying it out right now (i.e. negative brightness on an animlight cancels out other lights).
Edit:
Yup, that solved the problem - now I just have to tweak it for each cliff (and possibly also some trees). :thumb:
fibanocci on 13/11/2014 at 17:24
Yes, placing the shadow-spotlights needs some experience.
Set the spotlight to the objects when the mission is almost done. If you have a lot of those 'shadows', it can take so much time to render it.
Yandros on 13/11/2014 at 17:55
Be sure you're setting a radius on the spotlight's Light property, as that will reduce the calculation time. I've used small-radius omnilights with negative brightness to create shadows where the lightmap wasn't behaving.
qolelis on 13/11/2014 at 19:18
Quote Posted by fibanocci
Yes, placing the shadow-spotlights needs some experience.
Set the spotlight to the objects when the mission is almost done. If you have a lot of those 'shadows', it can take so much time to render it.
The lighting process already takes around 5 minutes, so I'm used to it. :cool: Do negative lights take longer to process (than non-negative ones)?
Quote Posted by Yandros
Be sure you're setting a radius on the spotlight's Light property, as that will reduce the calculation time. I've used small-radius omnilights with negative brightness to create shadows where the lightmap wasn't behaving.
Is there a minimum radius one has to set (for the negative lights to work) or is it entirely dependent on each situation? I'm guessing the latter. Either way, I'm going to continue with this later tonight or tomorrow, so I'm soon going to learn the details first-hand (I was really heading out the door right now, but then I got stuck with... things).
Thanks again, this turned out better than I thought when I first encountered this problem.
fibanocci on 13/11/2014 at 19:38
Quote Posted by qolelis
The lighting process already takes around 5 minutes, so I'm used to it. :cool: Do negative lights take longer to process (than non-negative ones)?
I think so. I have about 20 spotlight-shadows for big trees. Radius 40-60 DU. That takes much longer than normal lights.
qolelis on 13/11/2014 at 23:31
I did some very rudimentary speed-comparisons:
existing lights only: 04:33
existing lights + 5 negative lights (b = -200, r = 60): 04:55
existing lights + 5 positive lights (b = 200, r = 60): 04:59
existing lights + 5 negative lights (b = 20, r = 60): 04:57
I'm not drawing any conclusions yet, though (due to the currently very limited data set).
Yandros on 14/11/2014 at 03:36
That doesn't surprise me, there seems to be no reason why negative brightness light sources would have any greater effect on calc time than positive brightness ones. Radius has a significant effect, though (or rather the lack of one, which makes it infinite).
qolelis on 21/11/2014 at 18:08
I've noticed that objects and meshes sometimes get weird colours in negative light: Is this something I will have to accept?
