Level Design A Static Light with a built in light

[techgeek]

I've run across an interesting issue while adding the static mesh Paris Office Light (StaticMesh'ENV_Paris_Three_MESH.Office_Kit.ENV_Paris_Office_Light') to my map. I used this mesh via a KFDestructibleActor and added Damage mods, Particles, etc and paired it with a spotlight. I thought everything was working perfectly, but on one of my Play from Here tests, I noticed that after the spotlight was disabled via the Damage mod (Health = 0) there was still a small amount of light being given off. It was noticeable on the wall. I tried various things to find the source of the light.

Is it possible that the mesh has a small amount of built in light? I looked at the mesh in the editor, but I couldn't see anything that would indicate that it had light of it's own. Has anyone used this mesh and experience this issue?

 

[Seanchaoz]

No mesh gives off actual light. Light can only be produced by actual light actors, noting else.

Did you hook up the spotlight correctly to the destructible actor? It can be a bit tricky until you learn exactly how it works, and is easy to mess up. It needs to be tied in correctly several places.

In this video I create a destructible light with spot and point light completely from scratch:

[video=youtube;zwBYyejeK-Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwBYyejeK-Y[/video]

 

[techgeek]

No mesh gives off actual light. Light can only be produced by actual light actors, noting else.

Did you hook up the spotlight correctly to the destructible actor? It can be a bit tricky until you learn exactly how it works, and is easy to mess up. It needs to be tied in correctly several places.

In this video I create a destructible light with spot and point light completely from scratch:

[video=youtube;zwBYyejeK-Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwBYyejeK-Y[/video]

I've figured out where the light it coming from. I have an office building where the first 6 floors are essentially symmetrical with respect to construction and lighing. Meaning I've got spotlights directly over one another separated by the floor and ceiling of the floor above it. I have only implemented the destructible lights on the first floor, the rest of the floors above have "static" spot lights as placeholders for what eventually will be destructible lights. So I tested my theory by setting the brightness of a spot light directly above a destructible light to 0.0 (in affect turning it off) and then played from the destructible light below this. When I blew out the light, the slight illumination that I was seeing before was gone from the wall the way I expected it to and when I walked underneath the broken light, my avatar (arm and pistol) was completely dark.

So after that longwinded explanation, the short story is I've got light bleeding through my floor / ceiling above. So I'm not sure what my issue is as in my other thread I said I had issues with point lights doing the same. I'm going to have to play around with my static meshes for the wall / floor / ceilings and see why they aren't blocking light from bleeding into the room adjacent to it. Essentially i used the basic static meshes (orange walls, blue floors, green ceiling), the walls and floors overlap by the 8 units like they are supposed to (no visible seams or openings), the same can be said for the ceilings and wall. I used the beveled edges where I needed. Maybe it's the materials that I dragged onto these meshes?

I could tweak the radius and cone angle to keep it within the bounds of my room, but that would make the cone very narrow and limit the illumination of the room.

 

[Seanchaoz]

If a light does not cast shadows (static and/or dynamic) it will bleed through if the radius segments other meshes. Likewise if a light does cast shadows, but one or more meshes in between does not, it will bleed through again.

There are some cases where even with shadow casting lights and meshes, light can still bleed through a little bit if the light radius is very close to the wall/floor and has a high brightness. In such a case the only thing you can do is reposition said light or adjust it's settings.

An artistic trick many level designers use to maintain nice illumination without using bright lights is layer a large'ish pointlight on top of the spotlight, and give it a very low brightness. These will be weak enough to not bleed through meshes, but still give a noticeable added illumination to balance out the compromise you have made on other lights.