Question about models for light entities

[mr.Doom]

Hi,

This is just me being a bit curious. I've grown quite fond of DarkRadiant, so I tend to use it over the built-in d3-editor when mapping for Doom as well. However, there is one thing that doesn't work well, and It's when you have a specified model for the lights. So if you open up any map, you'll see the box with a question-mark instead. This is usually when there is special things going on like breakable lights etc. Is that just functionality that was never needed for the Darkmod/DarkRadiant or is there something else going on ? I tend to use d3-editor just for those special cases.

 

 

[HMart]

Are you talking about the prefabs?

If yes, afaik DR supports prefabs well, so if you are getting issues with that, could be because you are importing the model/entity not the prefab itself? 

To use prefabs (pre-fabricated complex group of entities) you need to right click on a 2D view and click on "insert prefab".

If you are already doing that and it still doesn't work, then is probably some prefab that got outdated/broken, if so, please do a bug report for it.   https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/my_view_page.php

[OrbWeaver]

Prefabs don't exist in the original Doom 3 or D3Edit as far as I know.

But I don't understand what is the issue being reported. As far as I can see, creating a light entity and setting a "model" key works as expected, with the model becoming visible in the 2D and 3D views in addition to the light bounding box. I'm not sure what else is meant by "having a specified model for the lights". Perhaps vanilla D3 does this in some other way than by setting a "model" key.

[datiswous]

I thought this could happen when you have not specified your mod folder correctly and you use custom models inside your fm instead what exists in the core game. I mean it sounds like this situation from the description.

 

Edited May 13, 2025 by datiswous

[HMart]

5 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

Prefabs don't exist in the original Doom 3 or D3Edit as far as I know.

Oh never knew Doom 3 editor lacked prefab ability, one reason DR got so popular then, prefabs are awesome. I never used inhouse Doom3 editor, besides trying it for a few minutes but DR felt better to me, so I used that.  

Custom DR prefabs, do work in Doom 3, obviously TDM ones will not.

I did used prefabs in Doom 3 for some things, like wall lamps and such, where I connected a model, a light and a particle effect for example. Never looked at the DR source code, but behind the scenes I bet the entities are just being bound to each other and that Doom 3 supports fine.

About the topic, I would love to help the person but like i said, I never used inhouse Doom3 editor, so I can't really compare behaviors between the editors.  And what you said sounds totally reasonable.

Edited May 14, 2025 by HMart

[Guest]

It kinda depends on original D3 object/inheritance structure vs. what is in TDM. If I remember correctly, TDM got this structure kinda backwards. In other engines it was usually Light > Light type (e.g. spotlight) > light with model attached. I tried this in DR long time ago, and the light was visible and editable as any other light.

In TDM it's Model > Model with light attached, with light being not editable. I remember there were some fixes planned to address that, and maybe that broke something?

[OrbWeaver]

8 hours ago, peter_spy said:

It kinda depends on original D3 object/inheritance structure vs. what is in TDM. If I remember correctly, TDM got this structure kinda backwards. In other engines it was usually Light > Light type (e.g. spotlight) > light with model attached. I tried this in DR long time ago, and the light was visible and editable as any other light. In TDM it's Model > Model with light attached, with light being not editable.

Correct. And I agree that the D3 way was much more intuitive, and allows the light to remain easily editable even after it has had a model attached. I never really understood the idea behind the TDM approach of starting with the model then attaching the light entities at runtime. I suppose it makes it possible to have more than one light source for a given model, but that would be a pretty bad idea from a performance perspective.

8 hours ago, peter_spy said:

I remember there were some fixes planned to address that, and maybe that broke something?

We do now have the ability to preview the light entities (in the 3D renderer), which is a big improvement over having them appear as completely unlit models. Actually editing them, unfortunately, still requires a very clunky manual "set light_color on <attached>" approach, which is probably close to unusable without dedicated UI support.

[mr.Doom]

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies. I'm not sure if it's just my setup, but it should be quite apparent if you load up any original Doom 3 map in DarkRadiant (unless it's only me having issues ofc). The mod folder doesn't seem to make a difference, but I do currently run the dhewm3 source port, so I should maybe run a clean installation on the side just to make sure and rule that out.

Here are two screenshots, one from darkradiant and one from d3-editor from the same location on a map. The model appears green when it is connected with a light. I believe default keys are shift + k in D3 Edit to achieve it.

And just to explain, the light on the right is essentially just brushwork and then a light sitting below it (not visible in the screenshots), while the left one is a light with the model property assigned, and the model can just be a func_static but that just doesn't seem to work in DarkRadiant for me.

Caverns2 shows this off in the first room below the elevator pretty well.

 

Edited May 16, 2025 by mr.Doom

[Guest]

At a first glance, the model field points to a model name, while it should be a model path, e.g. models/etc/modelName.lwo

Edit: oh, that could be a brush converted to a model, that's why it has model name in both fields. Maybe that's the issue?

Edited May 17, 2025 by Guest

[OrbWeaver]

Yes, that's just a func_static with a "model" key set to the entity name, which means it's brushwork converted to a func_static (so DR just renders the brushes).

My guess is that DoomEdit does something specific when you "connect" a model and a light, which we're not doing in the same way. I thought that all that "connect" did was set a target key to point to another entity. Maybe it's supposed to have special handling for models and lights.