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# Actor (UT)/Lighting

Any actor can be made to give off light by setting these properties. For example, it's often useful when testing Triggers to make them cast a small circle of light so you know where to walk to activate them.

## LightColor

This property group determines the colour of the light. For examples of settings, see Colors.

LightBrightness
  How bright the light should be from source and outwards.
LightHue
  Allows you to select a color through the default color spectrum. The values range from 0 to 255. Affects the color chosen.
LightSaturation
  This value sets the amount of white light to mix with the color selected. If the value is set to 0, it will be the pure color. The higher the value, the less rich the color becomes. This is very effective when creating realistic lighting schemes. The default saturation is 127. Affects the chosen color.

## Lighting

bActorShadows
  Unused.
bCorona
  Adds a corona to the light (the effect that is often called a "lens flare", incorrectly). A texture needs to be set under Display → Skin. See Corona for full instructions.
bLensFlare
  Unused.
bSpecialLit
  Light only affect walls and items with the Special Lit true. See Special Lit for more information.
LightCone
  Changes the size of the lightbeam in specific lights such as the spotlight.
LightEffect
  Adds an animation to the light. (Further down for specs.).
LightPeriod
  Sets speed of selected LightType and/or LightEffect.
LightPhase
  Start of light animation cycle.
LightRadius
  Radius of the light.
LightType
  What kind of light (Further down for specs.).
VolumeBright
  When in a FogZone, used to set how bright the fog around the light source is.
VolumeFog
  When in a FogZone, sets how thick the fog is around the light.
VolumeRadius
  When in a Fogzone, sets the distance in which the light casts fog.

question: should the following sets of options be on a page of their own? —Tarquin

### LightEffect

Light effects are animated shapes that affect surfaces within its radius.

TorchWaver
  Makes the light shimmer a little, ideal when used in conjunction with animated flames (such as in the GreatFire texture package).
FireWaver
  As the TorchWaver but more "drastic". Best when used with large-scale flame animations.
WateryShimmer
  Also like the TorchWaver but more wave and glimmer feel. Best if used with water animated textures.
SearchLight
  A rotating spotlight (Adjust speed with LightPeriod).
SlowWave
  A wave that starts from the middle and flows out.
FastWave
  As SlowWave but at a faster rate.
Shock
  A small pulsating light, fast up and slowly down.

Disco
  Think disco ball rotating glittering light specs.
Spotlight
  Simply a spotlight (set bDirectional).

Light Effect: Disco

NonIncidence
  Makes the light stronger and reduce the amount of shadow umbra.

Light Effect: Non-Incidence

Shell Only
  lights the actual LightRadius (a hollow sphere).
OmniBumpMap
  This a light that only light up actors (players) and not the geometry.

Light Effect: Shell

Interference
  Light waves that goes from bottom to the top.

Light Effect: Interference

Cylinder
  Creates a light cylinder instead of a standard sphere.
Rotor
  Like Interference but moves sideways instead, like a fan.
Unused
  It's a unused space in the editor that does nothing, same effect as far as I can tell as none.

Light Effect: Cylinder

### LightTypes

Light types affect the brightness and darkness values of a lights' lighteffect.

None
  No light is cast.

Steady
  The light is is constant; it does not animate. Default setting. Note that the light quickly fades to into the shadow umbra.
Pulse
  A "heavily" pulsating light.
Blink
  Randomly turns light off for a split second.
Flicker
  Randomly turns light on/off at random intervals.
Strobe
  Fast switching between light on and off.
SubtlePulse
  As Pulse but less "deep".
TexturePaletteOnce
  The light colour will cycle once through the texture palette selected for Skin.
TexturePaletteLoop
  As TexturePaletteOnce but loops. The value of LightPeriod sets the speed. For an example of this effect, look at the neon lights that glow blue to white in UT's DM-Phobos. There are texture palettes suitable for this effect in the GenFX.utx texture package.

GRAF1K: What I've done isn't exactly fine art, but a bit better I think.

Tarquin: I think rev.32 is best. The images are each captioned, so there's no confusion. I much prefer a DL to a table for this sort of thing. If you guys think the images still don't work, then let's taken them out of the DL entirely and make a gallery page or something.

Sobiwan: I could always downsize the images; that would help keep it all together more so than it is now.

Tarquin: I persoanlyl think it's fine as it is now

Light Type: Steady

## Miscellaneous

Other actor properties that are relevant to casting light:

Advanced → bDirectional
  Shows a directional arrow on an actor in UnrealEd. This allows rotation to be set with the mouse as well as in the Actor (UT)/Movement properties. Spotlights have this set to true by default.
Display → DrawScale
  Affects light actor size in editor and size of a corona in game.
Display → Skin
  The texture used for a lens flare and TexturePaletteOnce/Loop effect.

## Related Topics

- Lighting is the hub for all things light
- Understand Lighting Basics
- Understand all things Actor Overview
- Understand the Light (UT) class
- Understanding is half the battle!

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