Full Bright - Where are the Shadows???

#1 Um... what's your problem exactly? Models showing up as bright white, or what?

#2 There aren't any lighting effects in the engine. Barely any shadows and the engine doesn't calculate any sort of proper lighting effects.

I'm talking about maps specifically... everything comes out almost full bright.

www.surrogateinteractive.com/CliffEdge.jpg

Take a look at this map for example.

#3 Just turn the ambience of the sun down.

Phil.

#4 The problem I'm talking about is that no matter what settings you give the sun light in the game, it acts as a universal light setting so even if you walk into a cave area, its still just as bright as out side.

Turning down the ambient light values does help a bit, but there's still not even any semi-realistic calculations for lighting the level.

The engine shouldn't light up the inside of a building for instance.

And the same goes for fog. Its a universal setting. If you use fog in a map, there will be fog inside your buildings. There's nothing to tell the fog not to pass through walls.

The engine is really great, but its just lacking in areas that it shouldn't be.
Another example of this is the fact that although water looks cool, you can't actually swim in it.

Even the Quake engine handles lighting and water better than Torque. We've really got to fix these issues. So as I said before, if there's anyone who would like to help us add proper lighting (and other) effects to the engine and release it as a community resource, let me know.

Are there any projects that do have better lighting and water effects?

#5 You can stop the engine from lighting the inside of a building by using protals that block ambient light. Its a setting of the portals. A problem with that is that in some case you can actually see the line on the building where the indoor lighting takes over from the ambient light. That's actually the only problem there is.

#6 Make sure the building is leak-free, too--otherwise, all offers are null-n-void. :-)

-EricF

#7 How do you create a leak free building in Torque?

You need a door to the outside parts of the level. In leak terms, that would be one big leak.

I didn't think leaks matter in Torque

#8

Quote:
Even the Quake engine handles lighting and water better than Torque

I must reply this !

All complains about Torque, lights and stuff !
Its only a matter of learning what this engine can do and not !
I made many maps with the unreal and quake but i must say
I can do better things with this one then i ever could do with
unreal or quake engine and that include lights !!!
If you want water to swim in i believe there is a code snippet
for the swim function !
So its only a matter of learning and digging !

-Billy

#9 No. You cover the door with a portal (which you ought to be doing to keep framerate up anyway), then it is not a leak.

#10 Mark is correct here.... and that portal can either be one that stops ambient lighting, or one that doesn't. (take a look at the portal settings)

#11 As Mark mentioned, portals definately can improve framerates by helping to make leakless buildings.
Two great tutorials on the subject: Desmond Fletcher's and Stefan Beffy Moises'.

Fortunately, Torque can use some neat tools to visually see the portals. Unfortunately (for me as a modeler) I don't have a version of Torque which can use them. lol :-)

-EricF

#12 Thank you guys so much for the help. Getting used to the Torque engine after using Half-Life for 4 years isn't the easiest thing. I love the engine, it just seems like there's stuff missing, but I guess I just really need to do some more research into mapping for Torque.

Thanks again!

#13 It is also to do with the .dts shapes - they can be made "bright" like the bullets in tribes 2. but I can not work out how to make mine NOT bright at the moment which is really annoying. might be a bug in my exporter plugin.