Dimming Light Texture
I've got a light recessed in a wall, with the recessed portion textured with lights/white008. However, this is a bit to bright for my liking. Is there anyway to dim this texture (i.e. put something in front of it, change the texture itself)?
You need to change the texture scale, can't remember if you increase or decrease it, i have a feeling it's increase.
Make your own material (vmt file) in the .../portal/materials folder, and make it use the same texture. Then add that material on a new line in the lights.rad file (or make your own rad-file) in the .../portal folder.
Example vmt:
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UnlitGeneric // This shader will make your texture unaffected by light.
{
"$basetexture" "lightTextures/theLightTexture" // The path to the texture
"$surfaceprop" "no_decal" // Any type of material you want
}
Example rad:
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myTextures/myLightMaterial 255 255 255 200 255 255 255 150
(material_path LDR_red LDR_green LDR_blue LDR_intensity HDR_red HDR_green HDR_blue HDR_intensity)
There are good articles about this in the Valve Developer Community. If you need more detailed help, just ask.
Changing the texture scale worked great. Thanks!
no worries
Are the lights at the same distance from each other as with the normal texture scale or did the scaling place them further apart?
[quote="Ald?z"]Are the lights at the same distance from each other as with the normal texture scale or did the scaling place them further apart?[/quote]
I'm not sure I understand your question. The problem was only with one light, and by light I mean a brush with one side textured with lights/white008. This produces a constant light across the entire face of the brush. So what multiple lights are you talking about?
I realize I didn't express myself very good. When vrad encounters a texture that's meant to give off light, it places a number of lightpoints next to it. These points are the ones emitting light, not the surface with the texture. They have an even distance to each other. So what I was asking was, are the points farther apart when you scale up the texture? If that's the case, you might end up with a noticeable drop in light intensity between the light points (like a wave pattern).
I found an example of what I meant on Google. If you look at the recessed lights on the floor to the right, you can see that the intensity of the light is uneven:
http://www.gamerbytes.com/portal052.jpg
Ok, now that I understand, I think you're right. When you increase the texture scale, I believe you are enlarging and stretching the texture, therefore increasing the distance between the lightpoints, which I assume is what causes the drop in light intensity. I don't know any of this for sure, but from what you've told me it seems reasonable. What I do know for sure is: texture scale go up, light intensity go down.
Yes.