Rendering related keyvalues and inputs

Following keyvalues and inputs are available for all brush entities and are mostly relevant only for those which are visible (possible exception would be casting shadows with not rendered brush). There may still be rendering related keyvalues and inputs available only to specific brush entities^[confirm] and those would be listed on their pages.

Keyvalues read only by VRAD

Minimum Light Level (_minlight) <float>

Minimum amount of light to hit this brush (monochromatic). Values over 1 are overbright, and will bloom in HDR mode.

Cast Lightmap Shadows (vrad_brush_cast_shadows) <boolean> (in all games since )

Determines if this entity will cast baked lightmap shadows.
Recommended for "static" brush entities that don't move, toggle, or get deleted. Can be useful for doors, to prevent light from leaking in. Note that the shadow will persist even if the brush entity moves or disappears.

Technical: Vanilla-compatible toggled lightmap shadows Expand

Code:It is theoretically possible, by modifying VRAD, to store the status of a shadow in a lightstyle using a toggled light entity that doesn't cast light, allowing toggled lightmap shadows. While no known compilers for Source support this, reference implementations can be found in compilers for GoldSrc and id Tech 2: VHLT has light_shadow, which uses target to point to an entity to store toggled shadows for. Once HLRAD finishes compiling lighting, the classname is changed to light, so that it can be read by the game. Toggling the "light" toggles the shadow. ericw-tools instead adds a _switchableshadow_target KV to existing light entities. This points to which entity to store toggled shadows for, and causes the "light" to not actually cast any light. Since the game doesn't care about the extra KV, it simply sees the "light" as a regular light entity, so toggling the "light" toggles the shadow. Since Source has an additional "worldlights" BSP lump, it may be necessary to add a worldlight with intensity set to 0 0 0.

Keyvalues

Render Mode (rendermode) <choices>

Set a non-standard rendering mode on this entity.

Render Modes Expand

0: Normal 1: Color 2: Texture 3: Glow 4: Solid/Alphatest 5: Additive 6: Removed, does nothing 7: Additive Fractional Frame 8: Alpha Add 9: World Space Glow 10: Don't Render

Render FX (renderfx) <choices>

Various somewhat legacy alpha effects. See render effects.

Render Amount / Transparency (0–255) (renderamt) <integer 0–255>

Transparency amount; requires a Render Mode other than Normal. 0 is invisible, 255 is fully visible.

Render Color (R G B) (rendercolor) <color255>

Color tint.

Shadow:

Disable Shadows (disableshadows) <boolean>

Prevents the entity from creating cheap render-to-texture shadows, or lightmap shadows if the entity is a prop_static. Does not affect shadow mapping.

Disable Receiving Shadows (disablereceiveshadows) <boolean>

Prevent the entity from receiving dynamic shadows on itself.

Shadow Cast Distance (shadowcastdist) <integer> !FGD

Sets how far the entity casts dynamic shadows. 0 means default distance from the shadow_control entity.

Disable Shadow Depth (disableshadowdepth) <boolean> (in all games since )

Used to disable rendering into shadow depth (for projected textures) for this entity.

Disable flashlight (disableflashlight) <boolean> (in all games since )

Used to disable projected texture lighting and shadows on this entity.

Projected Texture Cache (shadowdepthnocache) <integer choices> (in all games since )

Used to hint projected texture system whether it is sufficient to cache shadow volume of this entity or to force render it every frame instead.

Choices Expand

0 : Default 1 : No cache - render every frame 2 : Cache it - render only once

Minimum / Maximum Effect Details Level (mincpulevel / maxcpulevel) <integer choices> (in all games since )

Don't render for players with Effect Details levels that exceed the minimum or maximum.

Choices Expand

0: Default ("Low" for mincpulevel, "High" for maxcpulevel) 1: Low 2: Medium 3: High

Minimum / Maximum Shader Details Level (mingpulevel / maxgpulevel) <integer choices> (in all games since )

Don't render for players with Shader Details levels that exceed the minimum or maximum.

Choices Expand

0: Default ("Low" for mingpulevel, "Very High" for maxgpulevel) 1: Low 2: Medium 3: High 4: Very High

See also:  cpu_level / gpu_level convars

Minimum / Maximum DX Level (mindxlevel / maxdxlevel) <integer choices> (removed since )

The entity will not exist if the engine is running outside the given range of DirectX Versions.

Choices Expand

Warning:If these are used, the object may break when the user switches their DirectX settings.[missing string] 0 - Default (no bounding) 60 - DirectX 6 (!FGD for mindxlevel) 70 - DirectX 7 80 - DirectX 8 (GeForce4 Ti & FX 5000 series) 81 - DirectX 8.1 (GeForce FX 5800, 5900 & Radeon 8500/9100 and 9000/9200) 90 - DirectX 9 Shader Model 2 92 - OpenGL equivalent to DirectX 9 Shader Model 2 (using ToGL; only) !FGD 95 - DirectX 9 Shader Model 3 (in all games since ) 98 - DirectX 9 Shader Model 3 on Xbox 360 ( only) !FGD

Render in Fast Reflections (drawinfastreflection) <boolean> (in all games since )

If enabled, this entity will render in fast water reflections (i.e. when a water material specifies $reflectonlymarkedentities) and in the world impostor pass.

Texture Frame (texframeindex) <integer> (not in ) !FGD

The initial frame number for all animated textures on this entity.

Inputs

Alpha <integer 0–255>

Sets the entity's transparency (renderamt) to a number from 0 (invisible) to 255 (fully visible). Requires the entity to have its Render Mode (rendermode) set to a value higher than 0.

AlternativeSorting <boolean>

Swaps the rendering order of the entity. Used to attempt to fix sorting problems when rendering, for example an object rendering in front of translucent materials.

Color <color255>

Sets an RGB color for the entity.

EnableDraw  (in all games since )

Removes EF_NODRAW from the entity.

DisableDraw  (in all games since )

Applies EF_NODRAW to the entity. Note that this is different from rendermode 10.

Shadow:

DisableShadow

Turn dynamic shadows off for this entity. Identical to applying  EF_NOSHADOW.

EnableShadow

Turn dynamic shadows on for this entity.

DisableReceivingFlashlight  (in all games since )

This object will not receive light or shadows from projected textures.

EnableReceivingFlashlight  (in all games since )

This object may receive light or shadows from projected textures.

Reflection:

DisableDrawInFastReflection  (in all games since )

Turns off rendering of this entity in reflections when using $reflectonlymarkedentities in water material.

EnableDrawInFastReflection  (in all games since )

Turn on rendering of this entity in reflections when using $reflectonlymarkedentities in water material.

See Also

• Tool textures (Source)
• VMT
• Rendering and studio model related KIO
• {{Brush rendering note}}