Lighting artifacts on meshes

[Clueless Newbie]

I've noticed that meshes often end up with odd (and ugly) areas where the lighting goes wrong. The result is a mess of dark triangles or blotches.

Any idea what can cause this? Too many lights? Not enough lights? Too many meshes in the same map? Too large meshes? ...?

[Alien]

Did you try other q3map2 versions. There are several patches for it in Nexuiz svn. tZork migh have already compiled version.

[Clueless Newbie]

Did you try other q3map2 versions. There are several patches for it in Nexuiz svn. tZork migh have already compiled version.

I've only tried MacRadiant 1.4. Where can I get the patches that might fix this problem? How do I install them? (I'm using OS X)

[tZork]

try adding "q3map_lightmapSampleOffset 8" to the shader for this surface. if it still splotches, raise that value. (don't forget to list the shader in shaderlist.txt)

[Clueless Newbie]

try adding "q3map_lightmapSampleOffset 8" to the shader for this surface. if it still splotches, raise that value. (don't forget to list the shader in shaderlist.txt)

My shader-fu is somewhat weak. How would I make a shader that does nothing but what you're saying above? This does not work (stripes2.jpg isn't rendered at all):

Code: Select all

textures/hookrace/stripes2
{
   qer_editorimage textures/hookrace/stripes2.jpg
        q3map_lightmapSampleOffset 8
   {
      textures/hookrace/stripes2.jpg
      map $lightmap
      rgbGen identity
   }
}


[tZork]

something like:

Code: Select all

textures/hookrace/stripes2
{
    qer_editorimage textures/hookrace/stripes2
    q3map_lightmapSampleOffset 8

   {
      map textures/hookrace/stripes2.jpg
   }

   {
      map $lightmap
      blendfunc filter
      tcGen lightmap
   }
}


[Clueless Newbie]

something like:

Code: Select all

textures/hookrace/stripes2
{
    qer_editorimage textures/hookrace/stripes2
    q3map_lightmapSampleOffset 8

   {
      map textures/hookrace/stripes2.jpg
   }

   {
      map $lightmap
      blendfunc filter
      tcGen lightmap
   }
}


That works. Thanks. It doesn't entirely rid me of the splotches, but at least it reduces them to a tolerable level. Only thing left now is to find an optimal value for q3map_lightmapSampleOffset.

[tZork]

try increasing q3map_lightmapSampleOffset to 10 and so on. the higher the value the less splotching. but it also flattens the lighting out more. as a last resort there's q3map_splotchFix but it not recommended unless nothing else works.

[Clueless Newbie]

try increasing q3map_lightmapSampleOffset to 10 and so on. the higher the value the less splotching. but it also flattens the lighting out more. as a last resort there's q3map_splotchFix but it not recommended unless nothing else works.

Hmm.. I've tried various values of q3map_lightmapSampleOffset now, and it seems that while higher values reduces blocky, unwanted shadows, it introduces unwanted lighting. Bad either way. I've set q3map_lightmapSampleOffset to 1 now. Doesn't do much, of course.

q3map_splotchFix, as far as I could tell, did not make any difference at all. Maybe I didn't do it right.

Well, the map is going up real soon. It has some ugly shading artifacts, but it's playable anyway.