Lens Flares/Coronas

by David Münnich

David Münnich

http://www.planetunreal.com/teamvortex/davidm/

Choice:

First let me clear up the typical novice mistakes in terms of lensflares.
Don't use flares that look cool on pics, they will make you vomit once you play the map and watch them.
And don't use colored ones. White ones only, because of the hue and saturation values of the light actor
it will have the right color.

That's all the lensflares from GenFX.utx.

RED - Don't use them under any circumstances.
BLUE - Use it only for candles.
GREEN - They can be used EVERYWHERE. Especially flare '3'. It's the best imo.
YELLOW - They are ok, but actually a worse version of flare '3'.

I remember, the first flare I used was '2', it looks good on that pic, but in game........blaaargh.
Now decide for yourself, which one do you like more? Pic1 (flare '3') or pic2 (flare '2'). If your answer was 'pic2' imagine some cruel insults here (Hint: right answer is 'pic1').
pic1

pic2

Settings:

Drawscale is the size. 0.1-0.2 is ok there. Default is 1 and waaaaay too big.
Skin, enter the flare texture here (3).
Brightness: 0, because the flare itself shouldn't give off light.
Hue & Saturation: same here like for the light that gives off the light that is supposed to come from the lamp. So the flare gets the right color.
Corona: true! NOT LENS FLARE! I have no idea what lens flare is for, but you don't need it!
Radius: 255 means that you always see it, from every range. But that would look stupid, 48-64 is ok.

Alignment:

The alignment is often very awful.
The flare appears in the middle of the light actor. This is somewhere in that red circle.

The brown glowing/selected brush is the lamp from pic 2 and 3 of that tutorial. Now align the light actor with the flare settings in the middle below the lamp.
Don't place it inside a brush. It won't be visible any more (except it's a non-solid brush).

Alignment in Fire:

Seems to be a hard thing too. No idea why that happens so often, but I see it all the time.
Here one of 1000 wrong examples. (No, I did not manipulate it!)

Place it in the center of the heat, at the brightest point, not on the top or somewhere else!
You may say: 'but in real life I see a corona on the top'......well, look at this pic, it looks so damn retarded, and it doesn't work like in real life.
Just place it where I told you and it looks perfect.