Light environment

Entity Description

The light_environment entity is a light controller, that casts both diffuse and parallel directional lighting from the toolsskybox texture. This is to approximate the light cast from the Sun or Moon.

• The Brightness keyvalue defines the colour and intensity of the direct light coming from the Sun. Direct light is cast on every surface that can "see" the Sun.
• The Ambient keyvalue defines the colour and intensity of the diffuse light reflected from the sky/clouds. Diffuse light is cast on every face that can "see" the sky.
• The Pitch/Yaw/Roll (<angles>) keyvalue defines the direction of the sunlight coming into the map through the toolsskybox texture.
  • The Sky_List article suggests some colour, intensity and angles settings to use with the official Valve skyboxes.

Warning:light_environment, env_sun and shadow_control should be used together. Each entity represents only a one aspect of a naturally unified phenomenon; Sunlight. light_environment defines the direct sunlight settings and creates (buggy, unconfigurable) dynamic shadows which can only be overridden/controlled by shadow_control. env_sun places a glow sprite in the skybox where the sunlight comes from. To make sense of it all, just make sure that the <angles> (Pitch/Yaw/Roll) are set the same for all three entities. Unfortunately shadow_control does not have the Pitch override parameter, so its Pitch will be determined by the first of its <angles>. Even more unfortunately, the Pitch override rotation cannot be switched off and is measured counter-clockwise from the horizontal (so straight down is -90 degrees) whereas the <angles> Pitch is rotation is clockwise (so straight down is +90 degrees).

• Because light_environment properties are applied to the whole map, only one light_environment per map is functional. A 3D Skybox does not require an extra light_environment placement. If multiple light_environment entities are placed, Vrad uses the keyvalues from the first placed light_environment to calculate the lighting.

• See also Lighting and Environmental Lighting, Sun, Weather, & Outdoors

Keyvalues

• Template:Kv angles
• _light

⇆#000000rgb(0,0,0)⇆ This approximates direct sunlight.

• _ambient

⇆#000000rgb(0,0,0)⇆ This is the diffuse light that is cast on every face that can "see" the sky.

• _lightHDR

⇆#000000rgb(0,0,0)⇆ This approximates direct HDR sunlight. Can be left as default or be slightly less bright, since HDR is sometimes rendered brighter.

• _ambientHDR

⇆#000000rgb(0,0,0)⇆ This is the diffuse HDR light. Can be left as default or be slightly less bright.

• pitch

<angle> This value overrides the value of pitch in the keyvalue "angles". 90 is straight up, -90 is straight down.