VRAD
An optional compiling tool that calculates the lighting of a map, It gives parts of the level, called patches, a certain amount of brightness depending on how much light it would receive. This is the slowest of compile tools due to the many, many calculations it must do to acheive this.
Side note: if you are watching the compile dialog and it looks like it has Hung on about 9... this is because Vrad takes longer with each light bounce calculation. Be patient.
Win NT/2k/XP/2k3: Also it is possible to open "windows task manager" (ctrl+shift+esc) and in the processes tab find "vrad.exe" and set it’s priority higher. (exercise extreme caution fiddling with these settings.)
Options
Use these in combination with expert compile mode or a batch file:
Common options
-v (or -verbose): Turn on verbose output (also shows more command -bounce # : Set max number of bounces (default: 100). -fast : Quick and dirty lighting. -low : Run as an idle-priority process. -mpi : Use VMPI to distribute computations. -rederror : Show errors in red.
-vproject <directory> : Override the VPROJECT environment variable. -game <directory> : Same as -vproject.
Other options:
- -novconfig : Don't bring up graphical UI on vproject errors.
- -dump : Write debugging .txt files.
- -dumpnormals : Write normals to debug files.
- -threads : Control the number of threads vbsp uses (defaults to the # of processors (times 2 for Hyperthreading CPU's) on your machine).
- -lights <file> : Load a lights file in addition to lights.rad and the level lights file.
- -noextra : Disable supersampling.
- -debugextra : Places debugging data in lightmaps to visualize supersampling.
- -smooth # : Set the threshold for smoothing groups, in degrees (default 45).
- -dlightmap : Force direct lighting into different lightmap than radiosity.
- -stoponexit : Wait for a keypress on exit.
- -mpi_pw <pw> : Use a password to choose a specific set of VMPI workers.
- -nodetaillight : Don't light detail props.
- -centersamples : Move sample centers.
- -luxeldensity # : Rescale all luxels by the specified amount (default: 1.0).
The number specified must be less than 1.0 or it will be ignored.
- -loghash : Log the sample hash table to samplehash.txt.
- -onlydetail : Only light detail props and per-leaf lighting.
- -maxdispsamplesize #: Set max displacement sample size (default: 512).
See Also: