Ogre Forums

Is it me or does Ambient lighting have no effect on world geometry in a .bsp scene? I made a small construct in a bsp map, loaded it and set ambient lighting to white and fully opaque, but theres no difference, I still need pointlights to light the geometry or there's nothing to see :/

No kind of dynamic lighting affects the bsp level, it's statically lit, just like Quake3.

So I have to light my entire map using point lights?? There's no way to set an ambient light level in a bsp map? :/

Point lights won't do anything either. Just as sinbad said you have to prelight your level using radiosity or some such. You need to create lights in your map editor and let it render the lighting as part of the BSP creation process.

tanis wrote:Point lights won't do anything either. Just as sinbad said you have to prelight your level using radiosity or some such. You need to create lights in your map editor and let it render the lighting as part of the BSP creation process.

Yea, the lights u can create in the map editor is what I meant by point lights. But so I have to light it entirely using those? Theres no way to define an ambient light level in the BSP format? I find that somewhat hard to believe..

Believe it. The level is not dynamically lit, and that's what ambient light is (even though it's boring dynamic light, it's still dynamic).

If you want to add global light, do it in Quark/Radiant.

Treize wrote:

tanis wrote:Point lights won't do anything either. Just as sinbad said you have to prelight your level using radiosity or some such. You need to create lights in your map editor and let it render the lighting as part of the BSP creation process.

Yea, the lights u can create in the map editor is what I meant by point lights. But so I have to light it entirely using those? Theres no way to define an ambient light level in the BSP format? I find that somewhat hard to believe..

It depends on the editor, Most settings for ambient lighting is done in the settings for the compile window, same place you will find settings for light map size and radiosity (radiosity has nothing to do with over all light just how many times light bounces from surface to surface but does have the added effect of upping the light in the scene as a whole) Full VIS ETC...

It will be in the form of 255.255.255 (255 being full bright)

Its a very common setting ins almost all BSP style editors.

I have no idea what the guys above are talking about lol. I don't think they know what you mean.

What editor are you working with?

I don't understand: do you mean BSP-levels can't be dynamically lit in any way?
Pardon my ignorance, but how about Doom3 then? I'm pretty sure it uses BSP aswell?

Lucky_Luciano wrote:I don't understand: do you mean BSP-levels can't be dynamically lit in any way?
Pardon my ignorance, but how about Doom3 then? I'm pretty sure it uses BSP aswell?

Yes they can and are, even gennisis3d has dynamic lighting.

Now, they may be speaking engine specific.All lighting in BSP style maps are done PRE_compile of the BSP/MAP file.


This was done (by me) in Gennisis3d, the torches on the pillars are dynamic lights, as well as the over all darkness was done with the ambiant light setting.

Doom3 isn't Quake3 bsp - it's completely dynamically lit using pixel shaders.

Yes you can dynamically light if you generate normals for the mesh. .bsp does not include normals but you could generate them if you wanted. We don't because BSP levels normally have lots of large faces for which vertex lighting looks terrible. That's why the main source of lighting in Quake3 BSP is precompiled lightmaps. Again, these days you could use shaders to light it all per-pixel (just like DOom3) but our BSP loader just does what Quake3 did - if you want more then you'll have to extend it.

Thanks for all your replies, I think I understand a bit better now.

Mr.Bloodworth wrote: What editor are you working with?

I'm using GtkRadiant. Any map editors you consider better? Cause I'd be willing to give any others a shot, it's just that this is the first one I found that suited my needs.

Btw, nice shots Bloodworth, looks really nice.