http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/6568/cavern.jpg

I recently started using a set of cavern meshes that, at least on the face of it, don't seem that complex. However, when I started doing lighting, I noticed that the mesh surface wasn't illuminating properly. If I added a light in one place, another light would seem to go out. (it wouldn't illuminate the mesh) I know there is a limit on how many lights can illuminate a single mesh, but I've seen stock caverns with lots of torches, and not seen this problem.

This is what it looks like in the CS:
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/6568/cavern.jpg
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/7941/cavern2.jpg

It's a bit frustrating, as I've already gotten a lot of interior work done with these. However, if I can't properly light the cavern, it may all get tossed.

Any ideas?

Alternately, does anyone want to help me build a better cavern?

Thanks!

Unfortunately, this is a game engine limitation... to my knowledge nobody's found any way to fix it.

Sometimes a light need not necessarily be placed inside the cave tunnel to illuminate it. Also lights that border eachother cause odd effects, sometimes they sum up, sometimes one gets put out. Best play around with different angles and positions of the lights, maybe even rotate the whole interiors around z-axis and see if it helps. I'm not sure if the vertex colour does have an effect on how the light can illuminate a mesh, but I have noticed, that most vanilla meshes have black vertex color on it, when viewed in Blender.


TheDaywalker :rock:

A MW .NIF file can only take up to two lights placed by the editor (I suspect the third light is the whole ambiance thingy) The rests of the lights will be neglected. This one reason why MW's meshes are divided into many pieces. I realized this when I was putting lights on every window on a house, each window mesh would receive light properly but not the wall of the house which is one whole mesh.

Hope that helps.

Oh and you can "bake" lights into a NIF file, if that doesn't help you can also project textures onto a mesh in a .Nif so there's definietly ways to fake other kinds of light. If your mesh is one piece and you have a good uvmap why not just paint the whole thing?

Cheers

Interesting, and that actually explains quite a bit.

The simplest solution is to just carve up the caverns a bit more. I haven't reached the level of blender-fu to bake in lights, and my uv mapping skills still pretty much stink. I can do simple projections, but this sounds like something I would need help with.

Thanks!