* Never place symmetrical light sources in a room
* Never use global ambient light, learn to light maps properly
* Place strong light source first before placing additive fill lights
* If a room lacks strong shadows, tone down fill lights
* Consider shadow area contrast when placing source lights
* Understand the advanced features of wait/delay
* Try to keep light/wait values consistent for light source types
* Always sync light entities to actual light sources
* Always Illuminate the primary path
* Light Flicker (style 1) can be useful for focus in a room
* Play with up lights for ceiling detail focus
* Lights can use mangle/angle parameters for directional spotlights
* Lights should always create interesting shadows
* Place strong lights for large shadows, fill lights to soften the edges
* Switchable lights are perfect for creating dynamic detail
* Place identical light sources at the top and bottom of platforms so that when the platform is in both positions it looks right for the light source 

Hi all, I'm just starting to learn TrenchBroom with no prior mapping experience for any game whatsoever. All of this is entirely new to me, and now I have a stupid question:

Can water brushes overlap with solid brushes? I mean, when you want to create a body of water in a map (like say you've created a pool that is not just a rectangular box, but has sloping edges etc.), do you then have to create a water brush/brushes fitting that space exactly? Or can you just create a huge rectangular water brush that overlaps with the edges of the pool/lake, as long as it fills the space you've "carved out", as it were? 

 

 

How the bloody hell do you remove mouse invert? And which evil bastard decided this should be the default behaviour for mouse look?!?! 

 

 

can't yet make heretic 2 maps, the version of QED you get with the latest heretic 2 patch doesnt work properly. Plus I have no idea how to properly compile Heretic 2 maps outside of Quark (Spent a good few hours trying to compile manually with no luck)

Ironically the brushwork was mostly created in trenchbroom, I just opened 2 instances of quark and copied the brushes over. 

those are some good tips sock, but how am I supposed to learn how to do lighting properly? 

RoQ,

Make a small map and light it. Start the game and go look around in the map. Make notes of what looks good and what doesn't. Go back to the editor and change the stuff that didn't look good. Use sock's guide to go by.

As with most things, you learn by doing. 

How does one make an exit trigger in TrenchBroom?

I created a brush big enough for the player to walk into, right-clicked on it, selected Create brush entity --> Trigger --> changelevel, but when I compile the map with hmap2 and play it, this brush is not there. Am I missing something? Are there certain settings I should change? 

There is a long phase at the end of a map's creation that's just tweaking some lights and rebuilding. Nature of the beast.

-onlyents is very nice to have at this phase.


Does Heretic2 have a different .map format or is it just different entities? 

... how does one create a set of doors that slide apart in TrenchBroom (instead of one panel that slides into the wall)? I've created two brushes and made them both doors, but they just slide together in the same direction. I guess there must be setting one can change somewhere, but am clueless as to what and where.

I hope this is the right thread for these absolute beginner questions... 

either "unlink" the doors by setting the entity flag as unlinked, or create a new key called "angle" and set them at opposite directions. 

I did both -- clicked "Don't link" for both doors and gave them both a new property called "angle", and made one "180".

Thank you so much! 

Try r_lightmap 1 - it can help you improve lighting without the textures getting in the way. 

@RingofQuaddamage

https://www.quaddicted.com/files/wads/


Trying To Find Textures
#13862 posted by RingofQuaddamage [100.1.255.141] on 2014/06/22 16:19:30
Any good rock textures for quake? 

keep them linked if they're double doors, or they'll open separately if you stand in the right place

setting two different angles is all you need 

Any idea what I'm doing wrong with the exit trigger (post #13880)? 

To point it at the next map - whatever.bsp or it'll not do anything. I can't remember what the key is called offhand.

Also, triggers are never visible and are only rectangles - so I big prism will still be a rectangle in game. 

If you can stand my colour scheme (or disable styling) here's a kind of overview of lighting:
http://necros.fov120.com/post.php?postID=2 

the keyvalue is "map" ijed :)

set it to the filename of the next level, without the extension. if you don't have one, just use 'start' or the name of the same level you're already in.