Dynamic Lights: An Advanced Dedit tutorial.

Introduction

This document contains four separate advanced tutorials, which will teach you the basics of useing KeyFramerLights, and LightGroups to do dynamic lighting effects. This document will also touch on Doors, RotatingWorldModels, Switches, and TranslucentWorldModels. If you do not already know the basics of Dedit this document might be a little bit confusing. You can learn the basics of Dedit by loading AvP2Dedit.html.

Contents

Tutorial 1: Light spilling out of a doorway as the door opens.

01 Creating the Door worldmodel object.

a. State Flags

b. OpenWaitTime

c. Move Direction

d. Move Speed

e. Block Light

f. ShadowLights

g. LightFrames

02 Creating the KeyFramerLight object.

a. UseShadowMaps

b. Light Radius

c. Light Color

03 Processor Settings.

a. Light Animations

04 Limitations

Tutorial 2: Fan casting shadow as it rotates.

01 Creating the RotatingWorldModel for the fan.

a. Start On

b. BlockLight

c. RotationAxis

d. ShadowLights

e. LightFrames

f. ShadowAxis

02 Creating the KeyFramerLight object.

a. UseShadowMaps

b. Light Radius

c. Light Color

03 Processor Settings.

a. Light Animations

04 Limitations

Tutorial 3: Lights that can be turned on and off.

01 Creating the LightGroups.

a. StartOn

02 Adding lights to LightGroups.

a. Light Objects

b. Light Radius

c. Light Color

d. Light BrightScale

03 Create the Switch

a. OnTrigger Target

b. OnTrigger Message

c. OffTrigger Target

d. OffTrigger Message

04 Processor Settings

a. Light Animations

05 Limitations

Tutorial 4: Setting up a Destructible Light.

01 Creating the TranslucentWorldModel for the light fixture.

a. Damage Properties

02 Creating the LightGroups.

a. StartOn

03 Adding lights to the LightGroups.

a. Light Objects

b. Light Radius

c. Light Color

d. Light BrightScale

04 Processor Settings

a. Light Animations

05 Limitations

Tutorial 1: Light spilling out of a doorway as the door opens.

01 Creating the Door worldmodel object.

Create a brush to become the door. Make sure it’s selected and right click. Select “Bind to Object” and choose “Door” from the list of objects. From the properties tab adjust the properties of the door. Make sure the object is selected and go to the properties tab.

a. State Flags

The StateFlags control how the door behaves. You can get a description of what each stateflag does by hold the mouse over the stateflag name for a few seconds. We want our door to close automatically so we will set the RemainOpen stateflag to False. The TriggerClose flag must be set to False if you want the door to close automatically, setting this flag to true requires the door to receive another trigger message before closeting.

b. OpenWaitTime

This field defines the number of seconds after the door is triggered open that it will wait before it automatically is triggered close.

c. Move Direction

The MoveDirection field is an X Y Z vector. A 1 will make the door move positive in that vector and a -1 will make it move negative in that vector. Example: Up would equal “0 1 0” without the quotes. East would equal “1 0 0”. North would equal “0 0 1”

d. Move Speed

The movespeed is the speed you want the door to move in Dedit units per second. If your door is 256 tall and you want the door to finish it’s moving in one second, make this value 256.

e. Block Light

By default this value is set to False, to have any effect on the lighting we will need this value set to True.

f. ShadowLights

This field is the name of the KeyFramerLight object that the door will use. Since we haven’t created the KeyFramerLight yet, you should leave this blank for now, but don’t forget to come back after we create the KeyFramerLight object and put its name here.

g. LightFrames

This is the number of frames of lightmap animations that the processor should generate for this door while it is traveling. The processor will also generate an additional two frames, one for fully open and one for fully closed. The faster your door is moving the less frames of lightmap animations you will need to make the animation look convincing.

02 Creating the KeyFramerLight object.

Make sure the door is now deselected by hitting “U” which will unselect all objects. Move the crosshair to where you want to place your KeyFramerLight by holding down “X”. Right click and select “Add Object”. Find and select “KeyFramerLight”. Remember to take the name of this object and place in the ShadowLights field on the Door.

a. UseShadowMaps.

This value defaults to True, it lowers the quality of the lightmap animations to make the .DAT file smaller. There is a performance penalty and the quality of the lightmap frames is poor. It’s recommended that you leave this at True and change it to False later if you don’t like the way the light is looking.

b. Light Radius

This value controls how big the radius is on the light.

c. Light Color

This allows you to select the color of your light.

03 Processor Settings.

a. Light Animations

Make sure to set the Light Animations checkbox on the processor. Without this box checked all light animations will not function.

01 Limitations

There are a few limitations to this effect. It doesn’t work well with Lambertian Lightmapping, which is used to give lights a more natural falloff. It is also can be a performance hog, depending on the number of lightmap frames and the number of polys being effected by the light.

Tutorial 2: Fan Casting Shadow as it rotates.

Tutorial 2: Fan casting shadow as it rotates.

05 Creating the RotatingWorldModel for the fan.

Build your fan brushes, then select all of them and right click. Select “Bind to Object” from the menu. Choose “RotatingWorldModel” from the list of objects. Make sure the object is selected and go to the properties tab.

a. Start On

Setting this to True will cause the Fan to be rotating by default. Setting this to False will require you to send the RotatingWorldModel an ON message before it will start rotating.

b. BlockLight

You must set BlockLight to True, or the object will not block lighting.

c. RotationAxis

For a floor or ceiling fan you will want the fan to rotate on the Y-axis, set the YaxisRevTime to 1, so that it takes one second to revolve a full revolution around the Y-axis.

d. ShadowLights

e. LightFrames

This is the number of frames of lightmap animations that the processor should generate for this door while it is traveling. The processor will also generate an additional two frames. The faster your RotatingWorldModel is moving the less frames of lightmap animations you will need to make the animation look convincing. Fourteen is enough for a one second revolution time.

f. ShadowAxis

This tells the processor which axis the shadow will be generated on, for our floor or ceiling fan example the default will do. If you change the rotation axis of the RotatingWorldModel you will also need to change the ShadowAxis.

06 Creating the KeyFramerLight object.

a. UseShadowMaps

This value defaults to True, it must be set to False for this effect to function.

b. Light Radius

This value controls how big the radius is on the light.

c. Light Color

This allows you to select the color of your light

07 Processor Settings.

a. Light Animations

Make sure to set the Light Animations checkbox on the processor. Without this box checked all light animations will not function.

08 Limitations

a. The number of frames required to make this effect look convincing completely depends on it’s use. This can make it difficult to get the effect to look proper, also this effect doesn’t work well with Lambertian Lightmapping if the light from the fan effects nearby walls. You should probably not use more than fourteen frames, and then not have very many per level.

Tutorial 3: Lights that can be turned on and off.

01 Create the LightGroups

Place the crosshair near where the light will be. Right click and choose “Add Object”. Select the LightGroup object. Set its color to the color of light you want to affect the models in the level. It’s very important that you place it near where the light source will be or the model lighting might look strange. Make sure the object is selected and go to the properties tab.

a. StartOn

Setting this to True will make the light start on by default, Setting this to False will make the light start off by default. We want this set to True for this tutorial.

02 Adding lights to LightGroups.

Select the LightGroup object in the node tree and hit F3. This makes this node the active parent node. Any new objects or brushes will be created under this node. Make your lights as you normally would, when you are done be sure to set the active parent back to the main node or you might accidentally place objects other than lights into the LightGroup. It’s important to know that the ONLY thing that can be in a LightGroup node is Lights and DirLights.

a. Light Objects

Be sure to set LightObjects to False on all light objects placed in a LightGroup leaving this as True will cause performance problems.

b. Light Radius

This value sets the radius of the light in world units.

c. Light Color

The value sets the color of the light.

d. Light BrightScale

The brightness of the light, any value can be used but values between 0.25 and 1.0 are the most commonly used.

03 Creating the switch.

Create a brush, which will become your switch. Make sure it’s selected and right click and choose “Bind to Object”. Select “Switch” from the object list. There are several values, which control the function of the switch, but the following are the ones that you will need to adjust to get it working.

a. OnTrigger Target.

Set this field to the name of your LightGroup object.

b. OnTrigger Message.

LightGroups respond to the ON and OFF messages. If the LightGroup is to set to start on, then set this string to OFF.

c. OffTrigger Target.

Set this field once again to the name of the LightGroup object.

d. OffTrigger Message.

Again, the valid messages are ON and OFF. Set this value to ON if the lightgroup is setup to start on.

04 Processor Settings.

a. Light Animations

Make sure to set the Light Animations checkbox on the processor. Without this box checked all light animations will not function.

05 Limitations.

You have to make sure the radius of the lights in the LightGroup aren’t affecting too many polys, otherwise you will experience performance problems.

Tutorial 4: Setting up a Destructible Light.

02 Creating the TranslucentWorldModel for the Light Fixture.

Build a brush for your light fixture. Right click and select “Bind to Object”. Choose TranslucentWorldModel from the list of object. Make sure the object is selected and go to the properties tab.

a. Damage Properties

Set all the health and armor values to one. Set the DeathTrigger Target to the name of the LightGroup. Set the DeathTrigger Message to OFF. Set NeverDestroy to False.

b. DebrisType

Select the DebrisType pull down and select Glass.

03 Creating the LightGroup.

a. StartOn

Since this is a destructible light we are making, this should be set to True.

04 Adding lights to the LightGroup.

a. LightObjects

Be sure to set LightObjects to False on all light objects placed in a LightGroup leaving this as True will cause performance problems.

b. Light Radius

This value sets the radius of the light in world units.

c. Light Color

The value sets the color of the light.

d. Light BrightScale

The brightness of the light, any value can be used but values between 0.25 and 1.0 are the most commonly used

05 Processor Settings

a. Light Animations

Make sure to set the Light Animations checkbox on the processor. Without this box checked all light animations will not function.

06 Limitations

You have to make sure the radius of the lights in the LightGroup aren’t affecting too many polys, otherwise you will experience performance problems. You can make a broken light fixture just behind the unbroken one or you can have it hidden and unhide it when the light fixture is broken. In the sample level I simply placed the broken light one world unit behind the unbroken one.