Light seeping through caulk

[DeTeEff]

Hi!

I'm doing the module approach with my current mission and I'm using shadowcaulk to seal of the individual locations from leaks/portalization etc. But at some random places, the light seeps through. I have encountered this before and then I used shadow brushes to try to cut of the light, but this doesn't seem as the ultimate solution

When I seal with just some random wood texture I can seal of the light, but it feels wasteful of resources to use those textures inside walls...

 

Do I just have to leave the caulk solution and use some "ordinary" textures or is there a workaround?

[nbohr1more]

Probably something to be studied in relation to:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=New_light_leaks_in_2.12

If you make the shadow brushes func_static and add:

"forceShadowBehindOpaque" "1"

does the issue persist ?

See also:

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6536

which is an open issue...

[datiswous]

35 minutes ago, DeTeEff said:

I'm using shadowcaulk

If you would use another texture than calk, would there be a noticable performance hit? If not, I don't understand why mappers still use calc. It's already proofed that calc gives no noticable performance gain. Maybe use a 1px texture?

[DeTeEff]

58 minutes ago, datiswous said:

If you would use another texture than calk, would there be a noticable performance hit? If not, I don't understand why mappers still use calc. It's already proofed that calc gives no noticable performance gain. Maybe use a 1px texture?

Maybe I'm an old fart that just want to build clean and caulk is a really noticeable texture, which also can be filtered out. And it's nice to use caulk because I know that as long as something from the module is visible it will be rendered in front of the caulk.

Nowadays you may surely be right in that the performance hit is negligible. 

 

@nbohr1more It's a sealing brush so making it into a fun_static wouldn't be so good. Perhaps if I add an internal sliver of shadow brush inside the wall, func_static it and try your solution... Nightshift tonight so won't be able to test for some time though... 

[thebigh]

There's a few benefits to using caulk that I've seen. You can filter them out, which makes seeing what you're doing in DR much easier. That's the big one. Caulk also doesn't z-fight, so there's no harm in having one face of a caulk brush sit flush with the textured face of some other brush or func_static. That can come in really handy when you're trying to seal areas with complicated and detailed geometry. Also, caulk is designed to be a non-rendering thing that seals against the void. That's its purpose and I have no reason not to use the intended tool for the job.

[DeTeEff]

@nbohr1more Update: As the leaking occurs in a corner I tried to add two separate slivers of shadowcaulk (turned into func_static). It leaks.

But if I combine the two into a single L-shaped func_static, the leak disappears. I didn't add forceShadowBehindOpaque 1.

So I guess I'll try the method of adding shadowcaulked func_statics to the problematic sections...

Not a clean solution, but who said mapping should be a clean affair?

[nbohr1more]

I think it's a trade-off of the new 2.12 optimization feature.

In theory, you would need to do less optimizing work and just need to fix a few light leaks here and there.

You can be less careful about light counts and light radius and not worry as much about the performance impact of lights from other areas, etc.

[datiswous]

13 hours ago, thebigh said:

There's a few benefits to using caulk that I've seen. You can filter them out, which makes seeing what you're doing in DR much easier. That's the big one.

Yeah but you can filter (almost) anything out with the right (custom) filter.

 

13 hours ago, thebigh said:

Caulk also doesn't z-fight, so there's no harm in having one face of a caulk brush sit flush with the textured face of some other brush or func_static. That can come in really handy when you're trying to seal areas with complicated and detailed geometry. Also, caulk is designed to be a non-rendering thing that seals against the void.

I guess it doesn't z-fight because it's not rendered. I didn't know about this. Interesting.

Edited June 12, 2024 by datiswous

[stgatilov]

Maybe you can share a map or a piece of it for inspection?

[Skaruts]

Might not be the case here, but make sure you're not using any materials with no-shadows there. 

I once fell in the trap of using one without noticing, so I just thought I'd mention it.

 

I might also try to replicate the problem in a simplified test map, to see if the problem persists. 

Edited June 20, 2024 by Skaruts

[OrbWeaver]

Not only is caulk not rendered, but it doesn't even generate renderable triangles at all. You can texture a wall with caulk, go into game and enable r_showTris and you will see no triangles at all for the caulked wall.

At least that was the case the last time I tested. Perhaps the behaviour has changed with the numerous renderer optimisations that have happened since then.

[HMart]

Yes that is the original behavior of caulk since the Quake days and probably before.

Edited June 21, 2024 by HMart