Glass Light (Portal 2)

Wall Glass Lights.

Glass Lights in Portal 2 replace the Recessed Wall Lights from the original first Portal. They are used in almost every Portal 2 test chamber and often are the main source of lighting. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create these glass lights for your test chamber.

While recessed wall lights can still be created in Portal 2, it's usually a better idea to use the "new" glass lights to keep consistency.

Creation

(Also available in Valve's Portal 2 Authoring tool instance located here : X:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\portal 2\sdk_content\maps\instances\lights

Step 1

Create a standard room.

Step 2

Cut a hole, 128 units wide, 32 units high, into that wall. Remember to not carve.

Step 3

Create a solid, also 128 units wide and 32 units high. Move it inside the hole you just cut, but retract it into the wall (watch out for leaks). Texture the face pointing inside the room with lights/light_panel_cool (or the neutral or warm variants). Texture the remaining faces with tools/nodraw.

Step 4

Create a prop_static. Set its world model to models/props_lab/glass_lightcover.mdl and set 'Disable Shadows' to 'Yes'. Use it to cover up the hole inside the wall and rotate as needed.

Step 5

Another job well done. Rinse and repeat.

Note: Make sure that mat_fullbright is set to 0 in your console in order to see the changes to lighting.