Question about Trenchbroom - Quake2 addon.

[znork]

Hi all!

First, Trenchbroom is a delight to work with. A few things work differently than my old editor, Tread3d. I am using the q2-addon from this forum: leray.proboards.com/thread/3529/trenchbroom-simplest-editor-quake2-addon

One of them is skies. If I remember correctly, I could edit surface properties of brushes, like content: lava, or 'sky' etc in Tread3d. The so called face-properties. In Trenchbroom, this doesn't seem to be neccesary: sky1 texture automatically becomes sky. However, it gives off no light, and I thought sky did that. Is there anyway to have my sky emit the natural top-light?

Also, if I remembered correctly, when making small lights (those 16*16 ceiling thingies you see everywhere), I had to put a light entity inside them to make them work. That also is not needed in trenchbroom: they automatically emit light. But how can I edit the intensity of the light?

Perhaps I do not have everything setup correctly, since the install instructions of this q2 addon were a bit vague and mixed with quake1-stuff.

thanks!

[sP1Sp0pD]

I'm not familiar with TrenchBroom, but I presume all editors allow to edit surface/face properties in more or less similar fashion. So, trying to answer your questions:

1. Indeed, normally those sky1 faces have surface flags of (SURF_NODRAW | SURF_SKY) = (0x80 | 0x04) = 0x84 = 132. Apparently that's what TrenchBroom is doing here. To make sky emit light, you have to set SURF_LIGHT (0x01) surface flag in addition to SURF_NODRAW and SURF_SKY, and also set some value. You should be able to do this in your editor's Surface Inspector or similarly named tool. Alternatively, you can modify your .map file with any text editor: search for those e1u1/sky1 faces and change last two numbers to "133 xxx" where xxx is your skybox light value, e.g. e1u1/sky1 0 0 0 1 1 0 133 200.

2. Technically, you do not have to put a light entity in those small ceiling lights: if you set their SURF_LIGHT flag and some pretty high value (e.g. 10000) they will emit enough light by themselves. Again, you should be able to see and set value field (which controls surface emittance when SURF_LIGHT flag is set, just like for the sky we'd just talked about). For bigger lights like ceiling fluorescent lamps you'd probably need a "helper" light entity to achieve better looking results though.

Check the last paragraph of this tutorial for more information on the lighting in Q2.

[znork]

Thanks a lot SP1Sp0pD. I have indeed been looking for a face-properties thingie in TB, but it does not seem to be there. Thanks also for clearing up 2]. I have never experimented before with light-emitting textures, but it sounds interesting. It seems the current TB-addon is somewhat simplified: face properties cannot be edited, light textures give off light without me editing surface properties (they did not do that in other editors), etc.

I might open the map in another editor and create the sky + surface properties there.

TB is certainly worth checking out by the way. I've made maps before, but with TB im actually confident i'll be able to finish a map before the complexity of the 2d views gets at me :-)
And its very nice to find an active mapping community here. Even a 2015 mapping contest! You guys rule.

[knightmare]

Trenchboom with the Q2 addon doesn't even write the surface/content flags and light value to the .map file, so you're stuck with whatever default flags and light value the .wal textures have. This is bad for complex maps, as it precludes marking brushes as detail.

However, I've heard there's a new version of Trenchboom on the way the fully supports all aspects of Q2 editing.

[znork]

Thanks knightmare, thats exactly what I thought - a limitation of the user-made addon. In fact, its a bit 'dumbed down' at the moment, one might say. Except for the sky emitting no ambient light, it is actually also noob-friendly.

So the conclusion is: you cannot edit surface or content flags of brushes in TB with Q2 addon.

Good to hear the programmer is still actively working on a new version with Q2 support!