Visportals and light question. Help needed!

[Wilcon]

I am quite far with my first map and I am placing some visportals now.

When you play the map, everything outside is rendered. The inside of the big building I placed somewhere is not rendered, thanks to a visportal. So it seems like visportals work pretty good with doors.

 

But I also made a tunnel, which is reached after using a button, which opens then "sarcophagus_lid.lwo" with a slide animation.

The visportal i placed there is not working as intended. Everytime I face the visportal it is green (r_showportals 1) and only gets red when I don't look at it, which is weird for me, because on normal doors it behaves a different way (It is red until opened).

 

 

In the picture you can see two visportals working perfectly, while the green one is the visportal mentioned above.

 

What am I doing wrong? How can I make the visportal behave like it does on doors?

 

EDIT: I somehow forgot the question about lights. Here it is:

 

I made a room with a beam at the top half of the room. It is possible to walk on that beam and there is no light on it. But I placed some lamps/lights right under the beam. Now the light and shadow looks pretty weird:

 

Edited March 17, 2014 by Wilcon

[RJFerret]

Visportals require the space be sealed with worldspawn brushes. Sarcophagus_lid.lwo is a model which does not seal.

 

This is one of those things not explained well in my opinion, the difference between brushes, func_static/entities, models, and how textures affect the nature of those things.

 

Models do not seal out the void. If you (temporarily) replace the sarcophagus with a door, does the visportal work properly? Typically one might bind a model to a door, or brush made into a func_static entity to animate as desired.

 

However, there might be a another problem if the visportal doesn't work correctly even with that change, the space beyond might be leaking (not sealed) in an additional area as well.

[Wilcon]

Well I checked it over 10 times if there is a kind of leak or whatever. I can tell that this is not the case, i am pretty sure.

 

Your idea of trying this out with a door is pretty good! I will try this out.

But I also read something about activating a visportal with a trigger. Maybe this is helpful in my case, since the door sarcophagus gets opened by button too.

[RJFerret]

You'll know if you have a leak once you seal it with a door, as the visportal will be closed nicely. If it's not closed, you have a leak to find.

 

No, triggering it is not a good option in this case I'm afraid, as everything down there will be needlessly rendered, and the leak will mean sound will not propagate properly (in other words, you'll hear sounds directly as if there's nothing between, rather than the sound going around and being muffled by the supposedly closed opening).

 

It will also mean the info_location system will not work properly, and you'll get the ambient sound and light levels from outside that area, instead of what you might have set for there.

 

Triggering visportals is for a specific use case that doesn't apply here.

[Wilcon]

Thank you thank you thank you!

The idea with the door works awsome!

 

And the problem with the light somehow disappeared ... I don't even know how.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Wilcon

[Wilcon]

After I placed some visportals, which work pretty good now, the light problem is there again.

As you can see in the picture i posted in the first post, there is a problem with the light behaviour, because the light of one lamp cuts somehow through the shadow another light is producing. What is the best solution for this?

I guess I will try to pretend having 3 lights, but in fact there will only be one light... the only problem is the light center :-/

Edited March 18, 2014 by Wilcon

[Wilcon]

Can someone help me with the light issue? It is really weird

[HMart]

If all is well with the vis portals and you have no leak, then you can try this:

 

- delete the geometry and make it again, perhaps is some strange error on the dmap process on that particular geometry.

- If deleting is not an option you can make the geometry func_static then disable shadows on it, if shadows are really needed then make a new brush around the original with the shadow texture applied, it will not render ingame but will cast a shadow.

[Wilcon]

Thank you! I moved the beam a bit and everything is fine now!

Thank you!