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Level Design Static mesh lighting

Desromar

Member
Aug 6, 2013
9
0
For some reason, the static meshes in my map seem to have some problems with the light sources i placed and with the ZoneInfo ambientlight.

The static meshes I placed in my terain are alot brighter than the surrounding bsp and the terrain itself. The weird thing is that when i play the map, some of the static meshes become even brighter/almost white and some others become completely black/cast unrealistic shadows. Also weird is that some of the static meshes that should be dark are very bright while there is no light source near them and are in a zone where the zoneinfo ambientlight is set to 0.

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The static meshes are made by me in the SDK.
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I am wondering if this is a common problem and can be solved without remaking static meshes or performing other actions that consume a lot of time.

I Have already searched the forums for a solution but nothing seemed to work for me so far.

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If needed, i will make some screenshots of the problem and upload them.
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I think I read somewhere that zoneinfo light is doubled for meshes due to a bug.

To make sure static meshes are affected by light in the proper zone you can use the forced visibility zone tag under display in mesh properties, match it with the tag of the zoneinfo (will stop it being lit from other zoneinfo light settings which can happen if the mesh is clipping through walls/floors slightly)

you can also try putting scale glow to 0.0000 under display in properties which I think only affects bloom, but that can make stuff look way brighter.

oh and...make sure bUnlit is set to false lol
 
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Ty for your help SMIFF, changing the forced visibility zone tag made the static meshes having the corect brightness :)

If the zoneinfo light is bugged on static meshes, there is not mutch I can do about it :(
I have tried to change the scale glow but it did not seem to solve the brightness of the static meshes placed in the terrain.


But your sugestion with the forced visibility zone tag gave me a idea.
if it is truely a bug that doubles the light on the static meshes than you can not change that. but if you would change the forced visibility zone tag from the meshes in the terrain and add a second zoneinfo and give that one the same tag and half the ambient brightness of the one you already have, would that make the brightness of the meshes the same as the terrain?

this is only a idea, I do not know if this is possible but I will give it a try.
Also, I am working on my first map ever and still have to learn alot of things about the SDK.
So I do not know if it is even possible to use 2 zoneinfo's in a single zone.

EDIT: tried it, didn't work.
 
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Only the ambient lighting of ZoneInfos is applies to StaticMeshes twice. In real-time though, which you can use to your advantage!

Build your map and ignore the bug and when you're done, do one last rebuild and THEN halve the brightness value for the ambient light. StaticMeshes are going to change immediately to now look normal but the lightmaps on brushes are going to remain unaffected.

==> matching light.
 
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