GZDoom vs GZDoom Builder brightness rendering (annoying me)

So, when doing gradated lighting sectors in GZDoombuilder, what is then rendered in GZDoom is quite different. I've done sample sectors from 120 brightness to 10 to illustrate

1st, gradients in Builder. Pretty smooth until you get to 50 and then it's just dark. I have no issues with this.

Then in GZDoom, the difference between 110 and 100 seems to me far greater than any of the other increments of 10. And then between 100 and 70 there is very little variance. Which is annoying.

As someone who obsesses over lighting this has been giving me a headache. Does anyone have any insight into what causes this? I've mucked around with all of the settings in GZDoom but to no avail. Having fog on seems to make the issue worse so I've turned that off. Worst case I will just have to adjust my light levels in editor but I'm worried that that'll fix it for me but will look bad for everyone else.

Any help is much appreciated

There are different light modes you can set in GZDoom  like Doom, Dark, and others. Other players might choose a different mode than you, making it too dark or too bright. On top of that, different monitors and/or graphics cards can render things with different brightness. You can't control any of that, so just make it look right for you.

Fair enough. I'm probably being too picky and I'm learning to use point lighting more and more which doesn't have this issue so it's becoming less of a thing. I just noticed it today in a couple of areas where I was thinking "I'm sure I made this area brighter" and then going back and checking Builder, back to testing, back to Builder and so and so forth. Fortunately I'm only 3 1/2 levels into my wad. Unfortunately they average around 60,000 linedefs ...

@Bridgeburner56

If you want make screenshots brighter, open the console and type:

png_gamma 2

Also, press F5 to go into options, then go to the "Appearance" tab and change the "Texture and flats brightness" setting value to 0. That way, you'll have the same feel of brightness in-game. 

On 15/04/2018 at 2:34 PM, leodoom85 said:

Also, press F5 to go into options, then go to the "Appearance" tab and change the "Texture and flats brightness" setting value to 0. That way, you'll have the same feel of brightness in-game. 

This +1.

I've never really understood why the GZDB default is to artificially brighten textures, it just makes it more difficult to get the lighting right.

Also @Bridgeburner56 you can define what light mode your map should use (e.g. Dark, Doom, Software etc.) in the Mapinfo file. People can change it once they've loaded the map if they really want, but 99% won't.

5 hours ago, Bauul said:

 

 

This +1.

 

I've never really understood why the GZDB default is to artificially brighten textures, it just makes it more difficult to get the lighting right.

 

Also @Bridgeburner56 you can define what light mode your map should use (e.g. Dark, Doom, Software etc.) in the Mapinfo file. People can change it once they've loaded the map if they really want, but 99% won't.

Yeah, I had no idea it did that. 

Cheers, that's quite helpful. I'm gearing the light levels around Doom light mode with no fog IIRC so being able to preset that will help avoid unnecessary bitching. Like you say if people want to force it into a different setting for personal preferences then it's up to them.

Also, love the avatar (assuming it's the eye from Train of Thought. Greatest album of all time) 

On 4/18/2018 at 5:05 PM, Bauul said:

I've never really understood why the GZDB default is to artificially brighten textures, it just makes it more difficult to get the lighting right.

I suspect it was a personal choice of the developer of the renderer in the editor. Perhaps they were thinking about being able to distinguish between different lighted areas more than making it look the same as what's in the game. It would make sense to have a game lighting toggle so you can quickly check or choose to edit with game lighting. Maybe the developer even thought of this and decided it would be up to the user to do this by testing in game, as it would be quite complicated to set up the editor to have the same lighting settings as the game.

50 minutes ago, alowe said:

I suspect it was a personal choice of the developer of the renderer in the editor. Perhaps they were thinking about being able to distinguish between different lighted areas more than making it look the same as what's in the game. It would make sense to have a game lighting toggle so you can quickly check or choose to edit with game lighting. Maybe the developer even thought of this and decided it would be up to the user to do this by testing in game, as it would be quite complicated to set up the editor to have the same lighting settings as the game.

Builder has a max brightness toggle which I use a lot because my maps are definitely on the darker side. There's enough of a discrepancy between builder and gzdoom regardless that you need to do in game checks on light levels anyway. Hence my original post