Level Design Light Goes Through Brush

[ZannX]

I have a problem where all my lights go through my BSP brushes. Example image here of a point light on the other side of a 16 unit thick brush: http://i.imgur.com/MOMRnkY.png

Any ideas how to fix it? I tried a number of lighting options with no success.

 

[Seanchaoz]

Are you using actual BSP brushes or the meshes from the official packages? You should be using meshes wherever you can, BSP brushes are not adviced for KF2 maps.

Is your mesh/light configured to the same channel? If you have properly set up skylights (and indoor and an outdoor), then you can prevent for example an indoor light from affecting a mesh set to only receive light from an outdoor light. The the Override Auto Light option on your mesh/lights.

Check if the light/mesh is set to cast shadows or not. If they are set to not cast shadows, lights may bleed through.

 

[MixMakMax]

Are you using actual BSP brushes or the meshes from the official packages? You should be using meshes wherever you can, BSP brushes are not adviced for KF2 maps.

Is your mesh/light configured to the same channel? If you have properly set up skylights (and indoor and an outdoor), then you can prevent for example an indoor light from affecting a mesh set to only receive light from an outdoor light. The the Override Auto Light option on your mesh/lights.

Check if the light/mesh is set to cast shadows or not. If they are set to not cast shadows, lights may bleed through.

Even so, in some situations light will bleed and it's unavoidable if you don't want to compromise your artistic vision. However if you wish or must compromise your artistic vision then the alternative is to reduce the light's casting distance until it doesn't bleed through other meshes.

 

[ZannX]

Yea, I did some research after I made this post and BSP brushes are definitely not great for light bleed. As an aside, it also fixed the blood issues once I learned more about the UV channels for the static meshes (that is, the BSP brushes don't have permanent blood splatters on them). I'm still very new to UDK, so bear with me.

So, I learned how to convert brushes to static meshes and I'm going down that route whenever I need to make any sort of custom geometry.

Here are my problems though:

1. I don't see a good way to modify the geometry of the static mesh after I've converted the BSP to a static mesh. Is there a good workflow for this aside from just recreating the whole thing again?

2. It crashes... a lot. The most common crash is after I've converted the BSP to a static mesh and then I try to place the static mesh in the world (to replace the BSP that I converted), it'll crash. The problem is that even if I just saved, I have to reconvert the BSP again after I've relaunched the editor. Seems like a giant pain.

3. Texturing a static mesh doesn't seem to be as robust as a BSP surfice. Is there something obvious I'm missing here? I'm talking about the options you get when you select a BSP surface (i.e. rotate, scale, normalize the texture) as well as the ability to select individual BSP surfaces to texture rather than the entire mesh. Right now, I'm just texturing the BSP before converting it to a static mesh, but again - if I change my mind later about the texture... going back to #1, there doesn't seem to be a great workflow.

 

[Seanchaoz]

I don't think you will ever get a good workflow with BSP brushes for this SDK, because it really isn't designed around it. You will just be setting yourself up for lots of headaches and wasted work hours.

You can fashion a lot of custom geometry by mixing the official meshes, resizing them, rotating, melding them into each other, swapping materials and so on. Combine them and create new collision if needed us also an option.

If you really need specific custom ones that you cannot fashion by using the official packages, then I believe the only proper way is to create them in a third party program and import them to your map package.

 

[ZannX]

Yea, I'm slowly starting to realize that. Even generating non-planar UVs for a mesh generated from a BSP that has a cylinder component is a nightmare. I think I will supplement with BSPs if necessary, but will try to stick with the meshes available to me from the game. Thanks Seanchaoz for your help and videos.

 

[Seanchaoz]

No worries mate, best of luck on your project, be sure to post it here