UDK light behaving badly...

marcoboy

Hi!

I just started to learn UDK and after watching a looooooot of tutorial videos i started to build my own level. Well I crashed in to a wall pretty fast

Problem:

I try to build a fluorescent light (or spotlight, same problem with that) in the corner where ceiling and wall meets. I have a lowered middle part of the ceiling so that it creates a small recess to the enges of the ceiling for the lights. Problem is that the light doesn't seem to light the walls brightly near the light like in real life. I can only get the lightmass, not the "direct" light at all.

Camera positioned so that you can see the actual light fixture:



Camera positioned so that you van't see the light (there should be a lot of bright light on the wall near the light and the light should cast a diagonal shadow to the end wall):



Here is a quick mockup of what I'm trying to archieve:



ps. Love the forum and have learned so much already!

Xendance

If you want sharp shadows, why do you have "shadow indirect only" checked? Also leave the light falloff exponent at the default value for starters.

Oniram

id suggest a directional light for that.

marcoboy

Xendance wrote: »

If you want sharp shadows, why do you have "shadow indirect only" checked? Also leave the light falloff exponent at the default value for starters.

When I set "shadow indirect only" off the scene seemed to lost all the light. Everything went black. enabling that seemed to be the only way to light the scene. Maybe the walls / ceiling is too close to the light? Moving the light doesn't seem to affect it that much...

marcoboy

Oniram wrote: »

id suggest a directional light for that.

True! Maybe that would help... If I position a directional light towards the room, would it still light the wall? or do need to use two lights (one positioned towards the room and one towards the wall)? (don't have the ability to test things right now).

Xendance

Oniram wrote: »

id suggest a directional light for that.

Directional light source is infinitely far away, it wouldn't work here. Spotlight might work better

marcoboy

Xendance wrote: »

Directional light source is infinitely far away, it wouldn't work here. Spotlight might work better

ok, is there way to "stretch" spotlight to behave like fuorescent light? Doesn't sound like something a spotlight would do.... Maybe place spotlights side by side and adjusting falloffs so that it seems to be a one long light?

Xendance

I've been experimenting with this and I think your mesh is the problem. Try adding more loops along the length axis of the light, because I too was unable to get that kind of lighting with one big cylinder that I just scaled up. But when I swapped that one big cylinder for several smaller ones, I got that kind of lighting what you want.
Also is your room static mesh properly unwrapped for the lightmaps?

Edit: Also emissive BSP surfaces seem to work better on my end.

marcoboy

Xendance wrote: »

I've been experimenting with this and I think your mesh is the problem. Try adding more loops along the length axis of the light, because I too was unable to get that kind of lighting with one big cylinder that I just scaled up. But when I swapped that one big cylinder for several smaller ones, I got that kind of lighting what you want.
Also is your room static mesh properly unwrapped for the lightmaps?

Edit: Also emissive BSP surfaces seem to work better on my end.

WOOW! Seems to work. Now I only need to learn how to do that Thank you so much! I knew there was a way.