Putting a light inside a model.. doesn't look right.

[twiz]

Okay, so I made this purty model and finally got it compiled(Rick_D did it for me THANKS!), and tried to implement it. I really doubted it would work in the first place, but I wanted to give it a shot. I'd like to see if you guys could help me get it to work. The idea is for some spooky lighting for my graveyard/crypt level I'm workin on. So I decided to make a skull that is mounted on a little stand that is attached to the wall, with a candle inside the skull. I've tried a bunch of different ways to light it, but it doesn't seem to work like I pictured in my mind. If I put the light inside of it, the light just goes through it and casts no shadows. I basically wanted to see a big shadow of the skull's face on the wall across from it. All it really does is light up the inside of the skull(like it should), but everything else is just lit like there is nothing there - normal light, no shadows. Am I doin something wrong, or does HL2 just not cast shadows from props? I was thinking of trying to build a little invisible box to help block some light(dont know if this is even possible), but the detail is just too high, it'll just turn out all blocky.

I just had the idea of expanding the skull in Hammer and placing it near the opposing wall, then crafting some invisible, light blocking, no-clip boxes right in front of the wall. How can I go about doing this? Also is it possible to make these invisible light blocking brushes shake a bit, to simulate the look of a candle flicker?

I'll get some pics of it in a few, it looks pretty terrible right now. The worst part about it is the light going 'through' the skull illuminates some faces on the outside that shouldn't be lit. In fact the areas lit should be heavily shadowed... I think the best looking result so far was to put a bright light inside the skull, to illuminate the inside like it should be, and a much dimmer very small light source right outside the skull, just so the skull isn't a silhoutte. I still have to fix those lit faces. I'm thinking of just eliminating that face from the model since its rather unneccesary.

I don't think it looks good enough to use like it is though. I might just stick the candle on top of the skull and call it a day. I really would have liked the shadows, woulda gave it some great atmosphere, but its probably just not possible.

[SnipaMasta]

You'll have a problem doing this with lightmaps - I would suggest a decal and an Env_sprite in the skull. Perhaps put a dim light at the base of the model to simulate light coming from that general area.

[von*ferret]

pic

[twiz]

pic

[KoKo5oVaR]

This ain't doom3 foo

ps: and give smoothgroups to your model

[Fletch]

My suggestion is to alter the skin to make it appear bright on the inside and dark on the outside and then use very narrow spotlights from the eyes and mouth. It's more work, but it's at least doable.

[Defrag]

I'm not sure whether this applies for static props, but you should maybe look into creating a shadow model for your prop (you have to create the .smd and then specify this stuff in the .qc when compiling it). I'm possibly barking up the wrong tree, though.

[twiz]

This ain't doom3 foo

ps: and give smoothgroups to your model

I had smoothing groups in my model, but when Rick_D was helping me get it compiled he imported the SMDs into 3dsm and re-exported them, I'm assuming the groups got lost in that process.

I think I have a way to make it work, or at least appear to have worked. I created a spike shaped brush(4 sides at one end, a point at the other). I put the point at the location of the light source, and put the 4-sided one on the opposing wall. I manipulated the vertices until I had a square who's sides were touching very outer edges of the eye socket as they passed through the model. I then created a square brush in the same dimensions of the square end on the wall... I textured it with the skin of my model, and fudged with the scale and location until I had the eye socket centered and just barely fitting on the brush. I then created a few brushes to match the outside of the eye socket, deleted the skin-textured brush, and repeated for the nose and mouth. I now have the entire wall covered in a big brush, which I'll texture black and make translucent. I'll have to do this for the entire hallway... but it might look funny when the players appear brighter than the shadowing on the walls. But if I make the effect as minimal as possible while still looking somewhat realistic/cool, it'll probably be okay. I don't want it to be terribly drastic because then the hallway would be much too dark.

I actually had another idea to help prevent the brighter player models. What if instead of coating the walls in translucent black "shadowing", if I just made the non-shadowed parts(eye sockets, nose, mouth) a func_brush and set Render Mode to Glow, and use a very low FX Ammount? That way I wouldn't need to create a big black coating everywhere, and it actually might make the players light up a little as they ran in front(although on the wrong side... meh.)

Or I could just throw this one in the scrap file. I could still use the skull as a random prop somewhere I'm sure. Its a graveyard after all.

[twiz]

I think I figured it out!

This is what I did.. I created a small hollow box, open at one end. I butted that end up against the wall, and textured the whole box in the light_block texture. Stick a light inside the box, and bam! A nice bright spot on the wall in the shape of the box. It still has a little light soaking out, but in my test I had just the standard white light. If I dim it down a good bit it should look right, after all shadows aren't perfectly crisp. I can always turn the light grid down a bit to get sharper shadows, right?