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# Adding Sunlight

This page is one of a sequence of Mapping Lessons.

Sunlight has one tricky property which confounded me for about an hour making my first terrain. The light from a Sunlight will be blocked by the subtracted brush itself unless you set the walls to Fake Backdrop. To set this property, click on a wall in the 3D preview window, then hit the Shift-B key combination to select all the faces of the brush. This is what that should look like in the 3D viewport.

On the selected walls do Surface Context Menu → Surface Properties, and in the surface properties window check the Fake Backdrop checkbox.

Caption

## Adding the Sunlight

Add an Actor >> Light >> Sunlight to your level. I like to move it up near the top of the subtracted cube. You'll also want to rotate it so the arrow points in the direction you want the light to shine. Note: in later builds of UT2003, the "eagle-head" icon as seen below has been replaced by a yellow ball icon, to look like a sun. Don't let this throw you.

Now if you rebuild your level the terrain will be visible in the 3D viewport in Dynamic Lighting mode. The default settings for the Sunlight are a little dim, so you may want to increase the lighting brightness & play with the color if you want.

## Related Topics

- Lighting

## Discussion

Mr. Neutron: Hope I'm doing this right (editing whole document to add a comment). I didn't understand you saying that subtract brushes "block" sunlight without fake backdrop. What do you mean? Did it not work at all, or did the walls get funny lighting or what? I can't see how this would effect the lighting on the terrain.

Birelli: I'm not positive but I believe the reason that you might think that the large subtractive brush is actually "blocking" the light is that in order to get SunLight, you need to have walls set to fake backdrop for it to come "from". I think it's easier just to think of it as that light comes "out of your skybox" and is transmitted through the fake backdrop walls, although this is most definitely not true in a technical sense.

Next Lesson:

- Building A SkyBox

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