Does light do simplified calculations on bmodels with _shadow 1? I get weird squares of shadows on solids from complex bmodels (in places, not everywhere). Splitting a big bmodel into a few smaller ones doesn't change anything. Any suggessions? 

There have been problems with _shadow 1 bmodels intersecting/touching each other, or the world. The faces that are touching can have artifacts, either black fringes or solid black or other artifacts.

I forget what the current status is, because I've been swapping in and out hacks to try to combat that.. but I'm working on a more correct fix.

Other than that, there shouldn't be any problem with shadows from bmodels. Check your version is 0.15.9, or feel free to email me screenshot/map if it seems like a different bug. 

If the bmodel doesn't touch another solid, the problem should be gone? 

Yeah, if they're not touching the problem should not occur (at least a 2 unit gap. The light sample points are 1 unit above the face, having these sample points blocked is what causes issues) 

that was very helpful 

does "-bounce 1" bounce lights with negative values? 

Negative lights are ignored by bounce 

The use of an origin brush for rotating entities doesn't work with -hexen2. The origin brush is visible ingame and the brush still rotates around the map origin 

Yeah, there is no origin brush support at the moment.

Current behaviour is (designed for Q1 hipnotic rotation):
If a brush entity classname starts with "rotate_", qbsp looks at the "target" key, and searches for the targetted (point) entity. That point entity's origin becomes the origin of the brush entity.

I'm not sure if that is compatible with Hexen 2 rotation? 

Hexen 2's is more like half-life, though it uses the "flags" key for how many degrees it should rotate. I think you can manually enter the origin to specify where it should rotate but that doesn't seem to work right in trenchbroom 

You can actually manually put the origin in, but you have to place the brush at the map origin or it ends up outside the map.

Kind of a pain to light it properly but it works otherwise. 

lmao that sounds like an editing nightmare 

Tried implementing it, download available on the github issue

It might be handy for Quake too.
Hope I did it right.. if there is a brush in a brush entity with the "origin" texture, the center of that brush is used as the model origin (qbsp translates the model so that point is at 0 0 0, and sets the "origin" key).

Also light no longer cares about the classname starting with "rotate_", if the brush entity has an "origin" key set to something other than "0 0 0", the faces will be translated to that position during lighting (hopefully doesn't break anything?) 

Is there a standard for final compile settings? I assume people leave BSP and VIS parameters alone, except maybe -bsp2 for BSP? Is that something everyone uses, or only if the map somehow doesn't compile as a regular BSP? Is there any reason not to use BSP2?

For light, judging by the doc page on Eric's site, I'd guess people use -extra4, -gate 1, -bounce 1, and maybe some -soft? 

Yeah, the main thing is to use -extra4 on light; the other tools can stay with the default settings.

-gate 1 is probably fine but it's actually a faster/lower quality option than the default. -bounce 1 is something you want to use from the beginning if you are going to use it, since it'll change the entire look of the map. -soft is personal taste, it will make the final lightmap softer.

Is there any reason not to use BSP2?
It's best not to use the -bsp2 flag unless it's needed so the map will run on the widest range of engines (including vanilla ones). qbsp will print an error if the map exceeds limits so that it requires -bsp2. 

-bouncescale .8 or so? What about sunlight and dirt settings in the worldspawn? 

Tougher to generalize as those are more artistic choices. The screenshots / settings on the website give some starting points, you can also check map sources for ideas. 

I did check out some of the AD maps and was surprised to find very little dirt is used. Judging by the 1000 Cuts screenies I'd expect a lot more dirt, but maybe that's because of the greyscale. Sock seems to use 96 dirt, I'd think an intermediate between 256-512 would look nice. 

Sock seems to use 96 dirt, I'd think an intermediate between 256-512 would look nice.

Sock's 96 dirtdepth is not a bad value actually. A dirtdepth of 256-512 is something that works when looking at a distant shot of an otherwise fullbright map, like in the preview image on ericw's page. For a normally lit map, it means surfaces 256-512 units away will be darkening your target surface, which can just suck all the light out of interior rooms quite easily. 

I know it's probably a good value; Sock chose it. I have no Quake experience so all I have to go on are Eric's pics and various worldspawns. I need to jump in and make myself a test map. 

I prefer to set things like bounce in worldspawn and keep my compilation configuration as "universal" as possible. I just use -extra4 and -soft on my light config, and I usually use bsp2 for qbsp because what current engine doesn't support it, anyway? 

Don't use bsp2 if you don't need it. 

You can use the bounce parameters in the worldspawn? It doesn't say that on Eric's site. 

Yeah, i'm pretty sure. Also, because of otp, i'm only going to release my maps in bsp2 from now on. (Not that I release any maps...) 

Same. I only use in my compilation setup are the ones that can ONLY go in there. Otherwise the rest go in worldspawn.

Actually, speaking out loud, I need to add those to my .fgds.