Minlight = "minimum light" =/= "minus light" 

Newhouse,

Those are not textures in the screenshot. That is the actual lightmap. You switch it on and off in game using the console command r_lightmap as seen in the picture.

You can also bind a key to toggle it on and off in your autoexec.cfg 

@Kinn

Thank you, so fill lights are okay.. I assume I need to start using them in a darker areas. I know they aren't as bright as main light if set to be weaker, what I tried to ask was "how to make it blend well together with main lights / be smooth) what delay is good for fill lights?

@Rick

Thank you. Really didn't notice that it was just the lightmap (I must be blind). 

It's not like there'd be any difference between lightmapped white textures and displaying the lightmap directly. 

Maybe it's too late to complain, but where are the screenshots? This is becoming another mapping help thread. 

http://i.imgur.com/uSLqXZD.jpg

playing around with lights, color blends, wait values shadows and highlights... 

That looks interesting. I'd recommend a bit more texture variation but that's about it :) 

It looks good just the way it is, just keep playing around with lights and it will turn out great* 

But yeah, I tend to agree with Fifth. 

What Fifth said, good and bad. 

 

(It's been a while)
Lighting has been an issue for me as I haven't really experimented at all.

Having read https://shoresofnis.wordpress.com/guides/lighting-basics/ &
https://spawnhost.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/quake-1-lighting/ I found I kinda get the basics but pages like the abovementioned http://quaketastic.com/files/LightTest.jpg
and especially the images on http://ericwa.github.io/tyrutils-ericw/ are exactly the kind of things that I've been looking for to better understand what to do where. 

A red sky in the back naitel? 

its a skybox from AD, i had a difficult time on thinking about the surroundings, its still a working progress, i was thinking about building structures in the background... we shall see... 

Especially since this is evolving a bit as compilers add features like phong etc.

Also re: #14455 ericw that's a very cool feature. I've used surface lights a lot, being able to tweak them is going to be great moving forward. 

http://imgur.com/uSLqXZD

lighting is smooth as butter! 

How is the lighting looking? These are going to be default lights, then depending on situation there will be lights from other sources too. But making sure that if I create darker places, there is still enough light to navigate without problems.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwxYkKdSD855MVpBU25EVHVvRzQ/view?usp=sharing 

Looks really good man, I admire the amount of pre-planning you do for your creations.

The light in the glass looks really nice. Everything else looks good too. 

 

Thank you! These are elements that should have that consistency, especially moving platforms. I don't want to make peoples life harder than what it already is. My retro jam 8 map was a mistake in that sense.

Thanks to dumptruck_ds for helping me with door lights. I'm planning using them for doors that has lights attached (larger doors). I want to give different doors different purpose when to use them in a scene. Larger doors are like the biggest goal (depending on the scene), and also has this wow light effect. Giving a little reward for the player in a mental state. Then every larger door also opens slower than smaller ones, but I really need to play with timing, since players don't want to wait too long (yeah, it is a big deal, just come on open already).

Glowing window(s) is kind of.. focus point(s), where player immediately looks at, because it has the strongest contrast in brightness compared to other elements. 

Correcting typos.. retrojam6* 

Naitelveni since you're already nailing it, I would go further and dare more contrast. Backup your work and light up this lava, make it look hotter. You could try a little stronger and darker sky light as well. And I would choose a skybox that matches the color you chose for the sky light.

Newhouse, it looks great, but don't you think the doors should have light fixtures? Maybe the doorway could have a texture like this one you used on the open door. 

Sorry I'm still noob with these lighting techniques, what is light fixture? I just placed on back and front these delay 0 lights to high-light them a bit.. also I tried that surface lighting, I put on sides of doors surface light textures and they worked tbh. If light fixtures will look better, then I gladly would like to try them out.

Also that glowing window used surface lighting. 

A light fixture is a lamp, for example. What I mean is: your light is more believable if it looks like coming from a source. The surface lights you made are perfect: it's lamp textures "emitting" those lights. That metal plate full of little spots make perfect sense. But when I look at the doorways, where is this light coming from? 

I wanted to do a lighting thread for a while now, I have an idea for it but I'll have time in a month or so.