Ambient lighting in maps?

[Botdra]

How do I add ambient lighting in a map? The map I'm working on right now is a copy of a map from another game, whose lighting basically came from the fact that it was outdoors, no other light sources. Just wanted to recreate that effect in my map.

[mrwonko]

If you just want to globally increase the brightness you can use the "ambient" setting in worldspawn (increases brightness everywhere) or "_minlight" (prevents dark areas without brightening light ones). Another possibility is having a sun (either via shader or as a directional light entity with the "_sun" setting) and using the -bounce parameter of Q3Map2 to simulate indirect lightning.

[Botdra]

If you just want to globally increase the brightness you can use the "ambient" setting in worldspawn (increases brightness everywhere) or "_minlight" (prevents dark areas without brightening light ones). Another possibility is having a sun (either via shader or as a directional light entity with the "_sun" setting) and using the -bounce parameter of Q3Map2 to simulate indirect lightning.

 

The map is overcast, so a more even light would probably be better but I might to a tiny bit of sun as well. How do I use the worldspawn exactly? And what's a good value to use to start with?

[mrwonko]

The worldspawn is any brush/curve that's not part of an entity, so just select some ordinary brush and open the entity settings to configure it. You'll have to experiment with the values, I only know the tech behind this stuff, I'm terrible at actually making stuff look good.

[Pande]

You definitely want -bounce in the light stage if it's an overcast map. If you have indoor areas that are lit by regular lights, put -dump in with bounce on your final compile, and then import the .map files it makes and delete any of the light entities that are indoors in those files. Then remove -bounce. (the -dump'd files are the lights a -bounce stage creates).

 

This way you can have nice overcast outdoors, and sharp lighting indoors without the ugly colour bleed. This process is annoying though, let me know if you need help as it's not an easy task persay.