Lights

Light Tool

Light Values · Exploding/Variable Lights · Actions

Lighting is an important part of Descent levels. This tool is used to compute the new light values for the entire mine based on the existing lights and texture brightness values (which are not changed by computing new lighting).

Light Values

Text	Description
illuminate	Whether to compute new vertex light values. The value can be set between 0%-100% and acts as a factor for the light brightness; 50% means half brightness and 100% means full brightness.
smoothe lighting	Whether to smoothe out the lighting values over texture corners. If disabled, sharp edges in lighting may occur with some light configurations, so it is recommended that this kept enabled.
scale lighting	Applies a constant factor from 0%-200% to the final computed lighting. 100% keeps the lights unchanged, 200% makes them twice as bright and 0% makes them dark.
set segment light (player/robot brightness)	If checked, the segment light that is applied to players and robots within that segment will also be computed. The value represents the light from 0%-100% to apply, or if "dynamic segment light calculation" is used, as a factor for the final value.
render depth	How many segments deep lights will be computed from the source of the light. Higher values give better lighting, but are slower to compute, while lower values can cause areas to appear dark.
classic illumination	Whether to use the older lighting algorithm, which is faster to compute, but results in lower quality lighting with less contrast (darker areas will appear less dark and bright areas less bright).
create side lights from textures	TODO ???
dynamic segment light calculation	Whether to account the lighting of the textures when computing the segment light used for players and robots within that segment. If unchecked, the segment light value will be independent of the light values used for textures.

Exploding/Variable Lights

Text	Description
calculate exploding/variable lights	Whether to compute light values for exploded lights (in Descent 2, lights can be destroyed) and variable lights. Recommended for all levels, and practically necessary for levels with variable lights.
apply	Selects which faces should have new exploding/variable light values computed for them. * all: All faces. rarely used. * not to static lights. Do not compute values for any sides that cast light. Use this, if exploding lights are located close enough to other lights to cause strange lighting issues. * not to lava: Do not compute values for sides with lava (since they cast their own light anyway). (default value)
render depth	The same as "render depth" above, but applying to exploding/variable lights.
frame rate	The frame rate when computing variable lights. A higher frame rate means slower computation and larger size, but is necessary for variable lights with fast speeds.

Actions

Text	Description
apply	Computes the new light values and applies them.
default	Resets the light settings to default values.
animate	Toggles whether dynamic lights should be animated in the mine view.
reset light + color	Resets all custom texture brightness and light color values.
Vertex Light	Used to apply a light level to all marked vertices. The input should be between 0-100.