Lighting Question

[BanalityDUFF]

I've been playing around with Hammer a little bit and am just figuring out how to make rooms and stuff


anyway.

ive been using the DOOM editor for the past few months and was just wondering what HL2 does with lighting?

in DOOM you break up brushes into smaller parts so that when a light hits it there isn't such a hit on preformance - its just the way it handles the dynamic lighting.

in HL2...is it possible to make 1 gigantic brush and have 10 lights hit it without any significant hit to preformance? does it even matter since its a lightmap? =/

 

[Cunbelin]

Hmm, I think you took some advice out of context for the Doom 3 thing, but in any case, HL2 and CS:S rely on mostly static lights and light mapping to achieve their lighting. Within the game it does also feature dynamic lighting, but because of scalability options it isn't the same kind of dynamic light as found in Doom 3. In any case the big difference is lights generally don't move, and you have to render out any light work. Also you should probably stay away from "cheating" as much as you would with Doom 3, though technically there is no limit to the number of static lights you may use, you probably shouldn't overdo it.

Basically in Doom 3 where you would have to create a light rig to simulate the effect of bouncing light HL2 does this for you. Unfortunately I don't know of an option to preview lighting outside of a game, so you will probably have to build maps and preview them using CS:S for lighting.