Wikis / Unreal Wiki / Legacy: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).

NonIncidence

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

Shell Only

lights the actual LightRadius (a hollow sphere).

OmniBumpMap

This a light that only light up actors (players) and not the geometry.

Interference

Light waves that goes from bottom to the top.

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.

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 :)

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!  :)