Lighting problems in my map

[Cthulhu]

Not sure if this is a good place but I have a few questions:

1. On my map when I play ingame all the player models are solid black. Anyways to fix?
2. My vegetation smeshes are pitch black. I tried changing the ambient brightness in the zone info, but that made them flicker.

 

[SasQuatch]

Not sure if this is a good place but I have a few questions:

1. On my map when I play ingame all the player models are solid black. Anyways to fix?
2. My vegetation smeshes are pitch black. I tried changing the ambient brightness in the zone info, but that made them flicker.

I've moved the post from the tips and tricks thread if thats ok, that thread should be used for posting tips and tricks only

As far as i can tell you have a lighting problem in your map.

- Do you use sunlight actors? If so, make sure you have a skybox AND your main level substraction brush has it's face texture set to Fake backdrop. Otherwise your sunlight actors will not work.

 

[Cthulhu]

Thank you for moving my post.

I do not have a skybox thing, but I do have sunlight actors.

I had a skybox, but it wasn't working, so I deleted it.

Now whenever I try to subtract a cube to make a new skybox, the terrain on my map disappears.

How do I make that not happen?

Thanks, you're an inspiration to me as a mapper. No joking, I'm totally serious.

 

[SasQuatch]

When you make any new substraction, UED will gladly hide your terrain in the viewport. A simple rebuild will make it appear again, don't worry.

Sunlights need a skybox in order to work. I learned to make one from this tutorial back in the days, it's a simple step by step. Just pick other textures and or static meshes for your skybox that can be found in the Hemispere.usx and utx packages to replace the stuff in the tutorial.

http://www.planetunreal.com/architectonic/tutorials/first_level_part8.html

you could alternatively copy an entire skybox from an existing map and paste it in your own map (Open existing map, drag select the entire skybox, right click on your selection and copy -> open your own map, rightclick anywhere in your map and do a paste)
The main thing for your skybox to work is to set the faces/textures on your main level substraction brush to 'Fake Backdrop'. If you don't your skybox will not work. If you do this kind of stuff, rebuild your map.

PS; thanks for the compliments

 

[Cthulhu]

I've made skyboxes before, I don't know what happened this time.

Also, sometimes whenever I try to move the camera out of the main subtracted cube in the 3d viewport Ed does this weird thing where it will flip out and repeat the last image it saw whenever I try to move the camera.

PS: Thanks for Stalingrad Kessel (If I remember correctly that's the one you did).

EDIT: Post # 200. Yippee skippee.

 

[SasQuatch]

Aaaaah, k, i wasn't sure how much experience you had

I did several maps, and Kessel was the biatch of them. Man she gave me a hard time, but i'm glad i kept smooching her

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, she's definately one of the most popular maps right now, second only to Arad which I'm not too fond of.

I wish people would play Baksan/Odessa/Krasnyi Oktyabr more. Those are really my favorites.

I guess I should go ahead and ask this question here (although you might end up moving me to a new topic, hehe):

I have two spawn areas with 5 player starts each. Both are identical in every way except one is labelled Russian spawn (with the correct volume tags and stuff) and the other is a German spawn. Both were made using the spawn area tutorial in the SDK manual.

Yet both sides will randomly spawn at either spawn area.

 

[Six_Ten]

black mesh

black mesh

Not sure if this is a good place but I have a few questions:

1. On my map when I play ingame all the player models are solid black. Anyways to fix?
2. My vegetation smeshes are pitch black. I tried changing the ambient brightness in the zone info, but that made them flicker.

I ran into this when I put my first static meshes into my map. I made sure they were properly uvmapped and then they worked fine.

 

[dasKaRmA]

In the RO-Info actor you have to set USE SPawnAreas=true
and in the Spawnareaproperties you have to set "bAxisSpawn" =true for the axisspawnarea and bAlliesspawn=true for the allied spawnarea.

oh and always press on the "build all" icon (and save your map after that) before doing a playtest, to make sure that everything works right.

 

[Cthulhu]

In the RO-Info actor you have to set USE SPawnAreas=true
and in the Spawnareaproperties you have to set "bAxisSpawn" =true for the axisspawnarea and bAlliesspawn=true for the allied spawnarea.

oh and always press on the "build all" icon (and save your map after that) before doing a playtest, to make sure that everything works right.

I tried doing what you said to get the spawn areas to work and after a build all I got errors saying all of the player starts were not imbedded into the level geometry.

 

[dasKaRmA]

You get these kind of errors, if your playerstarts are floating around in the Air or if your playerstarts are colliding with staticmeshes or BSP....

To make it work, "rightclick" on your terrain, floor, ect.. and select "add playerstart". You should see the playerstart (little joystick) floating over the terrain.


If you have placed your playerstarts already, just select all of them, "rightclick" on them and select "align"-"snap to floor". this should put them right above your terrain, floor, ect...

 

[Cthulhu]

Alrighty, thanks for all the support.

I think my rather small map is almost finished.