Automatic Lighting Generator?

[boris]

Dragonfly said:

Also, could it be possible to add a toggle so you either 'cast light' or 'cast shadows'? I imagine this would have more use if it acted like a light source than a shadowcaster, but could see use in both (Shadowcaster for outdoors areas, lightcaster for dark interiors etc.)

It does cast light, not shadow. I'm not sure if making it cast shadow is even possible.

[Dragonfly]

Oh brilliant. I must have misread a previous comment; either way when I'm finished with my current project I can see this plugin being useful on the next map I plan to work on - thanks!

[Aliotroph?]

boris said:

It does cast light, not shadow. I'm not sure if making it cast shadow is even possible.

Well, you can type negative numbers into the box. Then one-sided linedefs are occluding the darkness!

[boris]

But that's not shadow casting. Shadow casting would mean that sectors that are not visible from the light would get darken, instead of sectors visible to the light getting brightened.

[Aliotroph?]

Using negative values is like darkness casting. It darkens anything it touches. Strange and usually useless. I just brought it up to be cheeky.

I would think a version that darkened sectors occluded by walls would similar. The only thing that would change is what your starting brightness needs to be to achieve a given look.

[Linguica]

Was there ever any more work done on this? I downloaded the compiled plugin from Aliotroph and it crashes at the drop of a hat.

[Kappes Buur]

Works for me™



Did you try the one from boris's website?
https://github.com/biwa/lightningmode

[Aliotroph?]

Linguica said:

Was there ever any more work done on this? I downloaded the compiled plugin from Aliotroph and it crashes at the drop of a hat.

It isn't kind enough to output an error message? I had a very un-fun time getting it to compile in the first place. I think I had to build GZDB, but that always threw errors. Somehow I got enough of it to build that this thing worked ok. I can't remember if it crashed for me or demanded specific versions of GZDB.

I don't see any new commits in the last four months.

Kappes Buur said:

Works for me™

http://i.imgur.com/h0FDT0Z.png

Did you try the one from boris's website?
https://github.com/biwa/lightningmode

He is using that one. Boris didn't upload a compiled version, so I made one and uploaded it. Are you using the latest version of GZDB?

[Kappes Buur]

Aliotroph? said:

Are you using the latest version of GZDB?

I'm using r2657 with your compilation then.

[Aliotroph?]

Neat. My old install (that I did specifically for this) is r2503. Looks like having a newer version doesn't break it - at least in a general case.

[Tango]

This looks amazing :D I am curious how well you could actually light an entire map with this method (or most of it, anyway). I'll grab the compiled version and check it out. It would be great if the light produced diminished gradually as a function of distance from the light source (perhaps radially; sounds feasible).

[scifista42]

Even if it was feasible, it would tend to generate an uncontrollably high amount of vertices / linedefs / sectors, and polishing maps would become extremely time consuming, because you'd basically have to undo the lighting procedure every time you wanted to change something, either related to the lighting itself or to the map's architecture.

[Tango]

Ah, that's very true. Perhaps some sort of post-production thing, then? I don't really know what would be a good solution/if there's really any "easy" solution, but maybe something like that could work? ie every time you save the wad it gets "compiled" and the lighting stuff calculated, then I suppose if that breaks anything you can go back and manually edit it in the compiled version. dunno

Either way this is a super cool tool!

[Aliotroph?]

scifista42 said:

Even if it was feasible, it would tend to generate an uncontrollably high amount of vertices / linedefs / sectors, and polishing maps would become extremely time consuming, because you'd basically have to undo the lighting procedure every time you wanted to change something, either related to the lighting itself or to the map's architecture.

Yeah, the solution to this would be to have a development version of the map and then do a "release" where you run the light tool on it and output another map. The settings for all the lights would be stored in a lump in the development version.

Additionally, handling various combinations of two-sided lines, and possibly simulating light attenuation would be desirable. Those would make the number of tiny sectors larger or smaller depending on circumstances. These kinds of maps would be harder on nodes builders and renderers either way.

It would add up to a fair amount of programming and a big change in the process of producing maps. It could look awesome, though.

[Cacowad]

That's really neat! thank you for sharing it.

[kaleb.]

How does this work? It doesn't do anything for me :(

[Kappes Buur]

KalebNoobMaster said:

How does this work? It doesn't do anything for me :(

1. this plugin is for GZDoom Builder
2. you have to use the UDMF or Doom in Hexen format
3. your map must have void sectors which can throw shadows
4. set brightness of sector(s)
5. click the Lighting Plugin icon
6. insert a light, right click it to set brightness
7. drag the light for best effect
8. to fix the light (shadow) press the key bound to Do Lighting
9. repeat 6 to 8 for enhanced effect
10. test and save

For example:

[kaleb.]

Awesome! Thanks for the explanation, turns out you actually have to press INSERT. I was just clicking instead...