Lighhting Help !

[Wintermute]

On the off-chance someone stumbles into here and knows the answer...

I'm about 80% way through a map idea I've been working on for ages.
Essential to the map (it's a long story) is a lighthouse.

When the lighthouse is activated I want to see a well-defined beam of light coming from it (a narrow but well-defined umbra if you want to get technical).
i.e. I want to see a well defined cone of light coming from the lighthouse.

I've experimented with light and light_spot entities (tried changing the angles of light etc), to try and achieve this effect but it's not working.

I know it's possible 'cos I read a few articles on this a while back.
But now I can't find the damn articles and my efforts are failing.

Does anyone know how to achieve this effect ?

[jamie]

I think the answer lies in having a scooter on the map.

[Bob_The_Engineer]

With a pizza delivery box attached to the rear wheel ...

[Bullet]

a func_illusionary with the texture FADE/FADE2 (i think). make it into a cone with the light bit at the end nearest the light. set its render to invisible (solid 0) when the light isnt turned on. when the light is switched on use an env_render to change it to additive 64 (i THINK...long time since ive used these thingies).

that will give a cone of light which comes on with the light (the cone will look like the projector thing in office but no a bigger scale and fading).

erm....if you dont want the beam you can always try moving the light back, and build a sort of window for the light to come out of. so that it can only get out in a certani way (like a door with light no the other side sets a beam coming through rather than full spread light). ive never really used light_spots, but im sure the valve erc site has some info on them.

hope thats useful.....probably isnt

[Bob_The_Engineer]

I'd make the box blue and red ...

[Sputnik]

As Bullet says, just use a func_illusionary with the fade texture, set to additive with a renderamt of maybe 120ish depending on how defined you want it to be.

I'd also stick a nice big glow sprite at the source of the light to make it look better. Plus if the beam hits something, put a light entity there. Or use a light_spot to point there - with light_spots you get a light at the source and the target but nowhere in between.

The only downside I can see is that it might look too defined, the edges too sharp. In which case you could stick an extra brush on every side of the beam's brush, also with the fade texture but set perpendicular to the main beam. If you know what I mean! You might need to stick pure blue (invisible) on some sides so it doesn't look silly. Plus if players are going to be entering the beam, this would look a bit ood too - but experiemnt

HTH Looking forward to seeing the map

[Bob_The_Engineer]

And maybe make it attached using bungee cords.

[Wintermute]

Cheers guys, I'll give that a go.


Oh and sorry, no scooters or bungee cords, although there will be a deathslide.

[Bob_The_Engineer]

I think that the 2000% increase in traffic in this Mapping Forum should have informed you that people WANT pizza delivery boxes attached with bungee cords.

[sm]

I think that the 2000% increase in traffic in this Mapping Forum should have informed you that people WANT pizza delivery boxes attached with bungee cords.

Working on that assumption they also want beavers disguised as badgers.

[Bullet]

Oh and sorry, no scooters or bungee cords, although there will be a deathslide.

intruiging (sp?)

does it have buzzsaws and large spring traps?