The shadows cast by the wall torches. It's almost like some sort of fake AO effect.

I wonder if an AO technique could actually enhance the base quake aesthetic. All the big bulky architecture could possibly make it look really nice. It looks fantastic in Minecraft (I think they use some sort of fake AO effect there) and really makes the blocks pop.

Unreal (1) had a nice effect that I always liked as it made things seem really solid - I think it just darkens the seams where polys meet in a concave way.

Also, q3map2 has the -dark switch, which

"Enables darkening of lightmaps at brush/lightmap seams. Sort of like a half-assed occlusion pass, ends up looking a bit Unreal 1-ish. Very subtle."

I'll add it to my tyrlight wishlist... 

It did make it virtually impossible to do rounded concave corners that didn't look like ass though.

I always assumed Unreal didn't pad edge pixels in the light maps, causing interpolation to leak in the black margins around the edges.
I'm not sure if that's what was happening or it had something to do with the light attenuation formula. 

if it always darkened edges the same amount it wouldn't be good, but if it took into account the angle between the faces and interpolated between vertices, it'd probably be pretty awesome. 

if it always darkened edges the same amount it wouldn't be good, but if it took into account the angle between the faces and interpolated between vertices, it'd probably be pretty awesome.

Yeah i assume it's shaded based on angle 

I don't know if i can make a chandelier:

http://i.imgur.com/sZ8Ieo3.jpg 

The chandelier implies it's a housing environment, now it looks like it's asking for some more decorative elements... tables and book cases near the walls maybe? Floor rugs? Perhaps experiment with the lighting, making the chandelier the primary source? Maybe some wooden bars across the ceiling holding a secret? Just keep doing your thing, sir! 

i like it! 

I wonder if an AO technique could actually enhance the base quake aesthetic.

Lun3DM5 has zero pointlights and 100-something sunlights. I really wish q3map2 supported Quake1 :( 

I think I might rely too much on "realistic" light sources (torches and lamps). Do you use fill lights often? If so, what kind of attenuation? I usually add a zero-fall or inverse light with low value to create AO effects like that. 

I did not read all above but DP has a software GI renderer since 2012 if I recall correctly. 

A few years ago I modded aguirre's light.exe to support AO without hand-placing hundreds of lights. The thing is that the "sunlight 2" feature already auto-generates hundreds of lights, but the code clamps the result so that everything looks flat. If you take out the clamping and reduce the intensity of each of those lights, you actually get something that looks like AO. However you need to improve the distribution of those lights to get equal light from all directions of the sky -- the default distribution doesn't spread the lights out uniformly since it doesn't matter when you clamp the results.. Problem: hundreds of really dim lights run into precision problems, so you'd need to do some changes to the intermediate math so you don't lose a lot of precision. But it does look good. I should probably clean up and release that code. 

:D 

yeah, i'd be interested in that too. i hacked in AO/GI with sunlights but I didn't change the light level data type so you'd just get integer junk which looked ok, but didn't give much control. 

I would love to have a play with that light util if you get some time to release it metl! 

... I think. Is there a compiler roundup somewhere? 

http://i.imgur.com/TYHiHJr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/xzyHQiq.jpg 

great work! 

Great stuff! !! 

I've been mapping a dungeon - this has given me ideas 

Nice indeed :) 

I think the transition from wall to ceiling is a bit abrupt, maybe another layer of trim would do the trick. Especially with the protruding wall columns. Maybe lower the brightness of the wall torches a bit and push it some more on the chandelier? The torch lighting trick linked earlier might also help sell the lighting more. 

This was more evident in the old shot before you put a chandelier in front of it:

The curved ceiling in the first area extends all the way down the hall, but you cap it off with just a 45 degree slope. If you used the same barrel turned sideways & intersecting, the regular square ceiling tile texture would bridge across the seam with perfect alignment. 

 

That's exactly what I ended up doing, Luaran. I decided to move on from that ceiling at that time because I have a tendency for myopia.

I have a mapping question posted in the help forum as well.

Thanks 

This is the very first section of my map where I believe I'm ready to get advice on the difficulty and monster placement, etc. It is very short scene, but I tried to design it so that the player has a choice in how the approach the battle:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/wjznnigdhkn9shi/dom.bsp