How to fake soft shadows?


(BackSnip3) #1

In the game original maps, like in Valley or Sewer, I can see nice “shadow maps” for trees.
How can I make that?
I can make projected lights but I can’t make projected shadows!
If I use a light entity,the only way to make some shadow is to overbright the space between the dark places,and it looks weird…:confused:


(iwound) #2

its just a light with a texture.
ive done this with a black image of a tree distorted.
there are tree light textures in the sdk lights folder.
but if your outside your better off baking this into the megatexture as a stamp as it’s cheaper than a light.

but a light option can be animated. but i cant remember exactly how.

look in the blendlights.mtr in base/blendlights also, not sure how these work though.


(BackSnip3) #3

Exactly you found it :smiley:
It was the blendlights. Woohoo !! :smiley:


(iwound) #4

Let us know how you get on with these. As i said these don’t show up in editer. Although a normal light and texture combo will. But these are the enties used in valley for example.

not easy to setup if you can’t see them.


(BackSnip3) #5

This is simple as hell to setup, I just needed to change the light material et voila!
This is how it looks:
In the editor:



In-game:


(iwound) #6

Ah! now it works for me. Great. will use these.
Messing around with a lot of animated textures atm to fake movement.


(BackSnip3) #7

It’s a really nice feature to make some living vegetation :slight_smile: Now we can all make jungle maps or nice forests in our maps :smiley:
I think if you use the same thing and remove the movement template you can really make “shadow maps” for details like fences or stuff like that :smiley: You just need new textures :slight_smile:

I also use moveables in my maps but I can’t get them working to be breakable.There must be some missing code to spawn debris or just to kill the entitys… :S It’s a sad thing, would have been even funnier with breakable objects.


(pazur) #8

Really interesting. Great post! :slight_smile: Thanks