Cylinder Lights & Lightboxes

by David Münnich

David Münnich

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

Cylinderlight is a 'lighteffect' and it's mostly used in a very awful way. DM-Deck16 and DM-Grinder show perfectly how NOT to use them.
Instead of 'cylinderlight' you can also choose 'non-incidence', it's almost the same. Find out the small difference.

It's mostly used that way.

It's just a circle and not smooth at all. I think it's ugly.

You see, its smoother now. Let me explain. Light 1 is the cylinderlight, don't use a too big brightness.
Light 2 is a normal light (not cylinder) with a low brightness. It causes the smooth fade and it gives off some light to the environment, without it the wall next to it
would be pitch black, which would suck.
Light 3 is the same like in the first example. Without it the lampbrush would not look like giving off light.

Now add a lightbox actor from the deco class. Find the right scaling, that it fits the size of your lamp and align it.

Use it only for lamps where the relation of the sides is 1:1.
I get sick when I see it used on 2:1 lamps. That just cannot work.

Most mappers ignore the 'ScaleGlow' option.
I always turn it down to 0.5 or so, then the lightbox looks way better IMO.
It's not a big difference in this pic 'cause of the dark lighting, but usually it looks much better.

The alignment is an important thing. Don't do it like in these pix

Is that laziness or why does it happen so often?
I hope I don't need to explain why they are wrong placed.

A lightbox is NOT some kind of plastic tube that you put on lamps it's a "light beam" cast by the light itself.