Hi there.

How do I get those nice shadows from your trees??

I can make al those little brushes textured with shadow cast...
but thats a job for more then a couple of month's!!

thanx

I would swear trees give shadow.

when you write your .bat for flare, there are several things that you can add...

from the coduoradiant manual

Quote:

Flare flare args mapname.bsp where args is 0 or more of the following -Verbose Turns on verbose prints -Fast Use fast presets for several options -Extra Use high-quality presets for several options -MaxPolys Maximum number of polys to use during light compile (can be used to increase the default for larger maps) -MaxVerts Maximum number of vertices to use during light compile (can be used to increase the default for larger maps) -MaxBrushes Maximum number of brushes to use during bsp solid check -MaxOccluders Maximum number of occluders to use during light compile (can be used to increase the default for larger maps) -Visual Activates visual preview / debugging -DiffuseSun Forces diffuse sunlighting -NoDiffuseSun Doesn't do diffuse sunlighting -FastDiffuseSun SampleDiffuseSun uses a single vertical sky trace -ExtraDiffuseSun SampleDiffuseSun uses multiple sky traces -ModelShadow Allows model surfaces to cast shadows -NoModelShadow Prevents model surfaces from casting shadows -ModelAlphaShadow Allows transparent model surfaces to cast shadows -NoModelAlphaShadow Prevents transparent model surfaces from casting shadows -SunDiffuseSamples Hemicube edge size for SampleDiffuseSun (3N^2 samples) (Lower numbers will cause extra ghost shadows from the diffuse sun. 6-10, even values are recommended.) -DumpOptions Displays current settings of most parameters -Game Sets the game subdirectory other then main where assets can be found. Should be set to “uo” always. You can see all the options to flare by running the program with no arguments.

Thanks Stryder but is there an english (tutorial like I guess) explanation of when and why you would use certain of those options? I just make it fast which is what I was told when I started mapping.

BTW, thanks again for the DOM tutorial. I got it working on my Voyager map and the guys just love it.

fast vis and fast flare is just that...fast...not the best

the options are explained (those are all for flare) and you add them in place of "-fast"

for example...you can remove "-fast" in your (flare) .bat and replace it with "-ExtraDiffuseSun -ModelShadow -ModelAlphaShadow -SunDiffuseSamples 10"

this will do a 10 pass flare (best) with the most realistic possible lighting (ambient and direct) with shadows being cast by models (trees, etc) and alpha textures (chain link fences, etc)

StrYdeR writes...

Quote:

fast vis and fast flare is just that...fast...not the best the options are explained (those are all for flare) and you add them in place of "-fast"

Code:

-MaxBrushes Maximum number of brushes to use during bsp solid check

You know I respect your knowledge and your ability to explain things to the rest of us, but if this is your idea of "the options are explained", then you must be having a bad day. When I suggested an english version what I was looking for was somethin like:

Code:

-MaxBrushes Maximum number of brushes to use during bsp solid check. The higher the number the better the look of the map????? or whatever

What's the default for the sundiffusesamples? Is lower better? Is there a max? So should we use that for our "final" compile of a map?

Thanks!!!

what i posted was quoted from the compiling readme that came with coduo (which noone ever seems to read)

most of the options you do not need to concern yourself with, as they are usually tied to other options anyways (when you run fast it runs a certain grouping of settings)

the sundiffuse is user settable, and basically should be set to max (10) for your final compile...i wouldnt recommend doing less than 2 ever

be aware that the higher the number = better / more realistic lighting = longer time to complete the compile

Actually I did read some of them for CoD but couldn't make a lot of sense out of some.

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about. English!! :) :) Do you know if -fast set's it to 2 or do you think it probably best to just add that in all the time anyway? Thanks for the tip that larger number = longer time.

i *believe* (but dont know for sure) that "-fast" sets it to 2...

as stated in the readme...fast runs a set of presets, and is what (i would assume) the devlopers used for testing purposes

the closer you get to a final compile, the more control you are going to want to have over certain things

if you are interested, add the "-v" to your compile, and the log will be highly detailed, explaining what is set where and what exactly it is doing

the "-v" stands for verbose

im haveing bit of trouble understanding this i get soem odd shadows here is my .bat file

c:
cd \program files\call of duty\tools\bin
q3map -basedir "call of duty" ..\..\main\maps\mp\mp_anzio_beta.map
pause
q3map -vis -fast -basedir "call of duty" ..\..\main\maps\mp\mp_anzio_beta.map
pause
flare -extra -sundiffusesamples 10 -dumpoptions ..\..\main\maps\mp\mp_anzio_beta.map
pause

now is this considerd a full compile? cuz even with this done i still get odd shadows (image below)



thank you
super

p.s. im now trying to finialize my map with outdoor portals and vc log and good worldspawn settings and cant get this wrong as with my old pc it will take many-many-many hours to compile