no sunshine for me

[legacy-shaman]

Hi all
i am working on making my first terrrain, and i notice that the moment i hit "rebuild; for the first time, my level immediately plunges into blackness. It always does this no matter whenter i am creating a terrrain or a simple room. Does the same thing happen to you?
I keep turning up the zonelight, but thats not a permanent solution i am guessing?

Also, inspite of putting in a sunlight actor inside my terrain, at the correct height etc, my level still plunges into black. And no amount of tweaking the sunlight radius, color, brightness will do anything. I am making do with cranking up the brightness of the ordinary electric bulbs, but they cast horrible shadows on my walls... :-(

any ideas on whats wrong here? FYI, i am following Buzz's Terrain vtm letter and spirit. I am guessing i screwed some preset somewhere.

shaman

[legacy-wolferey]

have you set atleast one side as fake backdrop? The sun actor needs one or more sides inside the cube where the terrain is to be a fake backdrop to function.

[legacy-shaman]

Bingo!! you nailed it dude. Worked like a charm when i set walls to fake backdrop! Mucho thanks.

You wouldnt know why the level plunges to black when i dont have a sunlight actor in there?

Shaman

[legacy-Marsfyre]

because you are in the view showing lighting and textureing and you have no lighting by default....

[legacy-wolferey]

Like Marsfyre said, you have created a room with a terrain, but you got no lighting. You can however give ambientBrightness a nice number like 180 (you find it under zonelight in the properties of the zoneinfo), and do a build all, that should light the terrain (remember, in most cases, the zoneinfo must be above the terrain actor to give light)

[legacy-shaman]

ah, that raising the zoneinfo above the terrain is news to me!
thanks guys! i really appreciate you answering these noob questions so well!!

[Radiosity]

A quick FYI on sunlight - it acts like real sunlight, ie, coming from a more or less infinite distance away, so if you've got solid walls in the way the sunlight won't work. Setting Fake Backdrop on the walls is the same as telling the game that there are no walls there at all (since it knows that it's supposed to be an area of sky or whatever), so the sunlight can pass through unhindered.

Hope that makes sense