Intermediate - Advanced Lighting

 

In Unreal Tournament there are two categories of lighting for two different kinds of maps, as mentioned in the video. For tournament maps, you'd ideally implement sets of lights that do not deviate from the mean level of brightness, and all rooms will tend to be fairly well lit. For campaign maps, you'd want to be more creative with the features of UE1's lighting system that would otherwise come off as a detraction from gameplay. For instance, casting strong shadows and creating strong contrasts in rooms, or using colorful ambient lighting to convey the atmosphere of the environment.

The following steps instruct you on how to set up intermediate lighting. However, these are only lighting templates. Every mapper tends to have their own style of lighting. These templates are simply something to follow at first as you begin to play around with advanced lighting methods. In these templates, light sources usually look like this for each light source:

Tournament Maps

  1. Start by adding a light with a radius proportional to the volume of the room. If a room is 256 cubic units, a radius of 32 would work. Just find a radius that lights up a decent amount of the room. This will be the ambient light.
  2. Set the brightness of the ambient light to an amount that doesn't quite overexpose the room. This depends on your preference, but somewhere around 64 to 80 will work.
  3. For each light source add three light actors, one for the corona, one for the spread and one for the intensity.
  4. The first light actor should have a radius proportional to the light source. So if your light source is 64x64, the radius should be around 4.
  5. The first light actor should have a high brightness, from 228 to 255.
  6. The second light actor should have a radius about four times the first, but you should play with the radius to meet your needs. The brightness is also based on preference, or how far you want that light to reach.
  7. For the third light actor set the brightness to 0. Set the radius to be about four to eight times the first light's radius. Then go into Display in the actor properties and set the DrawScale to 0.2.
  8. In lighting properties, set bCorona to true and place this light as close as possible to the light source itself.
  9. Tweak the lighting as needed.

Campaign Maps

  1. Add four light actors for each light source.
  2. The first is the spread, and will have a brightness of about 128, and a radius proportional to the size of the light source. For example, a light source that is 32x64 might have a "spread" radius of 16.
  3. The second is the glare, and it should have a high brightness of around 224 to 255. The radius should be about a fourth or an eighth of the spread radius.
  4. The third is the contrast. For this light, set the light type to LE_NonIncidence. Its radius should be around doule or quadruple the glare and should have a low brightness of 4-8.
  5. The fourth is the corona, which should have a radius of about double the spread radius and should have 0 brightness. Set the DrawScale to 0.2 or so depending on preference and set bCorona to true in light properties.
  6. Tweak the lighting as needed.

For ceiling lights and spotlights, you can replace the contrast light with a light actor with LE_SpotLight. The radius should be about the size of the light source and LightCone should be about double that.

For campaign maps you should look into more creative lighting methods. Use contrast, shadows, colors, and effects as needed to make a more believable environment. Again, these are only templates. I think the best way to get a feel for lighting is to look at maps that already have a strong sense of it as well as practicing basic principles of lighting, or just following lighting templates like the ones above until you're comfortable with lighting to the point that you can develop your own style of lighting.