Hey,

Has anyone tips for a bright testchamber-like lighting in smaller maps?
Cause if i take the normal light and place it in the chamber middle, the light is too bright at the floor and the ceiling near the light.
Screenshot: http://www.Bildermonster24.de/images/457_light.bmp

If i use the Spotlight, its too pointy.

If i use the Environmentlight i cant set it up (Maybe i am to stupid?), its always dark...

So... How do you use lights in maps? Is there maybe a trick to have lighting look good in every kind of map?

EDIT: Is it possible too set up the light like in that one white clean chamber on singleplayercampaign, where you had to put the 2 (or 3?) cubes so that the 3 laserbeams reach their receivers... How did they do that? Cause it looks very good...
thx

You can use the instances provided, for instance the instances under the /labs folder are observation rooms that emit a bright light that can often be used alone in a chamber. Under the /lights folder there are some inset lights with varying colors that are good for lighting corners and places you want to make sure the player sees.

You can also use observation rooms to provide more general lighting as well. There are some ones with wide windows and others with narrow windows. Depending on the space you are trying to illuminate, one of these (or more?) will fill your space with a pretty decent "base" lighting.

For the particular map you refer to, you could decompile the map "sp_a2_triple_laser_d.bsp" and take a look.

As said, observation rooms usually provide the majority of the lighting. They consist of a light, which lights the observation room itself, and a light_spot (and sometimes an env_projectedtexture), which casts a natural looking light into the room.

In addition to observation rooms, chamber lighting is usually supplemented with Glass lights (wiki page here), which uses texture lighting. Also, there are sometimes light entities behind open panels and gaps in architecture, for that little bit of extra detail.

In general, when you add lights, you should always consider what it's source would be, in real world terms. It looks unnatural to just add a light, if the player can't see where it comes from. If you must use normal light entities without visible sources, adjust the brightness and keep them well away from walls, so you don't get the bright circle effect like in your pics.

FYI, light_environment is used in conjunctuion with a skybox, and does nothing on it's own.

The only time you would want to use a light_environment is if your map has exposed ceilings looking up into the sky, like in early sections of the singleplayer game, and you would need to make sure to set the "sky" surfaces to the tools/skybox texture.