Creating a wall light

From Valve Developer Community

~(A work in progress Feel free to improve)~

To do: Add proper texture names, and make look nicer.

Table of contents

1 Introduction 2 Steps 2.1 Step 1 2.2 Step 2 2.3 Step 3 2.4 Step 4 2.5 Step 5 2.6 Step 6 2.7 Step 7 2.8 Step 8 2.9 Step 9 2.10 Step 10 2.11 Step 11 2.12 Step 12

Introduction

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a wall light that is seen in the Portal test chambers.

Steps

Step 1

Create a room for the light to be in, in this tutorial I used a 384*384*256 room with 16 walls. Ensure the roof is touching the walls only by its edges.

Step 2

Texture the edges of the roof with the same texture you used for your roof.

Step 3

Shrink the roof by four on each end, so in this case, from 384*384 -> 376*376

Step 4

Create a 4*16 block with the invisible texture and put it right beside your newly shrunk roof. They should fit so there are no leaks.

Step 5

Copy the invisible blocks and re-texture them to have nodraw. Move them higher above the invisible blocks so you can easily preform step 6

Step 6

Texture the bottom of the nodraw 4*16 blocks to light_recessedcool?? Rotate them to be parallel with the block.

Step 7

Move the nodraw blocks to sit on top of the invisible blocks.

Step 8

Select all the top walls, and pull them up so they enclose the invisible blocks.

Step 9

Add an overlay with info_light_gradient, and change the vstart/end to .99 instead of 1.

Step 10

Resize to fit, and move inside of the hole.

Step 11

Repeat for every wall

Step 12

Compile your map, and ensure there are no leaks. If the light looks like the picture, then you have a leak.