Spotlights disappearing, meshes illuminated without light, file size and sunlight

[Peer]

Hello everyone,

this is my first post here, though I read a lot of threads in this forum which helped me several times.
I'm a total noob when it comes to mapping, but two weeks ago I decided to try to make my first KF map. After learning from tutos and this forum, I overcame most of the problems I had. Now, after several days, I still got some problems I can't fix even after searching for answers for hours, so I'm making a post here, hopping I didn't miss another thread about this :

1/ my map is basically a house in a forest. I tried several things to light it, but the best lighting I manage to get is using spotlights. Now my problem is, when I put the spot on the map, it looks as I want in the editor's 3D preview window. But when I build the map, the spots simply disappear, and the result is my map looks like exactly as there weren't any spotlight.

Here is the preview I get in the editor (remember this is a noob's WIP, I was just testing the effect of the spotlight) :



I click the build all button (build light does the same), and I get :



The light is back in the preview if I move the spot, but is gone every time I build the map.

2/ Sometimes, a light magically appear. I mean, everything's dark, and after compilation several trees light up, without any light near them. I tried to locate the bug (maybe that's a function, but well..), and it seems to occur when a brush intersects a trader volume. At least, it's always directly near a trader volume. It seems to particulary light static meshes. I have no pictures, as I couldn't recreat the bug. Last time I had it, I just keep deleting random things until it disapeared, without really knowing what caused it.

3/ The size of the map file increases strangely. From 12.4Mb, I'm now at 40Mb without really adding a lot of things. I do have a lot of IA paths, but still, this is not a big map, and 90% of the objects are a copy of the same tree in mesh form. I saw that KF official maps are way lighter than that with a lot more things on them. It's like the file has previous version of the map saved as well as the current. What could make a map file so big, and is there a way to fix that or optimise the map so the file isn't too big ?

4/ I got a sunlight-type light attached to the camera, which shows uniquely in the lighting 3D preview :



Is this normal ? I don't have any sunlight in this map (I had, but I removed it).


Here, that were my main issues for now. Sorry for the lenght of the post, and maybe some questions are stupid, but again I don't have any experience in mapping and tutos haven't helped me with these issues.

Thanks for reading.

 

[chewmyheadoff]

Im a total noob too and i know how you feel, have you tried playing the map as thwt helps a lot. Sometimes the viewports play tricks on you.

 

[Deek]

I know there's a setting in the terrain actor under TerrainInfo > DecoLayers called "DisregardTerrainLighting" that causes meshes to appear fullbright regardless of the lighting around them. I've had that setting spontaneously reset to 1 before. If your trouble meshes are not part of a deco layer, I'm not sure ... maybe there's a similar setting elsewhere? I'm still pretty new to this, as well.

 

[IrritAnt]

Hello everyone,

3/ The size of the map file increases strangely. From 12.4Mb, I'm now at 40Mb without really adding a lot of things. I do have a lot of IA paths, but still, this is not a big map, and 90% of the objects are a copy of the same tree in mesh form. I saw that KF official maps are way lighter than that with a lot more things on them. It's like the file has previous version of the map saved as well as the current. What could make a map file so big, and is there a way to fix that or optimise the map so the file isn't too big ?

The most likely suspect here I think are new textures. Do you have any new textures in your map? You have a terrain, how complex is it i.e. how many layers and decolayers do you have? Each of those needs its own alpha texture and can balloon out the file enormously.

Also, how large is your terrain? The bigger the terrain the larger each of those textures has to be.

BTW, props on trying to work all this out from tutes and other resources before posting here

EDIT: I'm really curious to see if I can figure out the rest of your problems. Can you upload your map somewhere?

 

[Nenjin]

Have you actually launched the game to see what it looks like? Bear in mind that lighting in the editor, even after it's built, doesn't really represent the lighting in game. My experience has been, especially with sunlight in a map, that things appear way darker in the editor than they actually do in game.

Secondly. The roof of the MASTER subtraction brush that you built your level from needs to have it's surface property set to "Falsebackdrop". Sunlight is calculated from OUTSIDE your level, even if the sunlight actor is positioned inside your level. If you don't have the roof of the level set to falsebackdrop, no light can come in from outside the level to represent sunlight.

Hope that helps.

 

[Deek]

Have you actually launched the game to see what it looks like? Bear in mind that lighting in the editor, even after it's built, doesn't really represent the lighting in game. My experience has been, especially with sunlight in a map, that things appear way darker in the editor than they actually do in game.

I can vouch for this. Despite UED bumping up the brightness, the 3d viewport still ends up quite a bit darker in the editor than it does in game, to the point where working on a level with dynamic enabled becomes near impossible unless you bump up the ambient lighting quite a bit (or bring the sun up to high noon).

 

[Peer]

Ok, I solved the lighting issue with the meshes, though I don't really know where it came from : I just moved some objects, and it magically disappeared. If anyone knows the reason...
For the spotlights parts, I'm still trying to work on it but I have much less time now, so I still can't manage to make them work.
For the file size part, the texture I got are basically 256*256 B&W terrain maps. I'll try to fix that when I'll have some time.

 

[Shibumi]

I'm willing to bet that your spotlight issue is a triggerlight issue. Are you using normal lights (ie. right click add light here) and then setting their effects to spotlight? If so, you need to use a trigger light actor instead. Do a quick forum search on trigger lights and you'll find everything you need to know about them.

Keep in mind, they're primitive and they don't occlude to BSP, therefore they'll go right through your walls and such. And for the record, if you use any dynamic lighting effect like pulsing, waving, strobe, spotlight, etc. the normal lights won't do it. You can get them to do it in the editor, but they won't in game.