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"Hidden" sun in custom space maps?
connectamabob
Member Posts: 140 Arc User
I went to create a new custom space map today, and I noticed that the lighting cast on my planets didn't match the position (or lighting colors) of the sun I'd placed. All the planets were being strongly illuminated by a hidden light source matching the default sun lighting colors located at about AZ -130. I tried fiddling with various options, like rotating the planets to see if the light it was baked into them instead of global, removing all suns and/or background layers, etc, but with no change. I even crated a new map just to see if that one instance was bugged, but to no avail. All I managed to discover was that the lighting was effecting my ship too, just not as strongly as the planets.
It's really annoying because if your sun is somewhere other than AZ -130 (like, say, the the default AZ 0), it really becomes glaring since the "hidden" light source seems to completely take precedent over the placed sun, making the lighting look all inconsistent and wonky: the side facing your placed sun will be shadowed, while the side facing away in the direction of AZ -130 will be brightly lit. It's a little better with ships, as the placed sun there takes precedent over the "hidden" one, rendering the light from the "hidden" one into a mild fill light effect, though it's still annoying that I can't get rid of it completely to create hard shadows when necessary.
One could start just sticking ones placed suns at AZ -130 to hide it, but that still gives no control over the extra lighting temp, specular color, fill, etc.
This doesn't seem to be an issue with premade maps, but them a lot of those have baked in features that can get in the way of the kind of careful deliberate map crafting that's the whole point of custom maps.
Anyone else noticed this?
Also apparently the forum lacks the ability to handle standard special chars like the degree symbol for some reason. It turned them all into question marks and I had to edit them out.
It's really annoying because if your sun is somewhere other than AZ -130 (like, say, the the default AZ 0), it really becomes glaring since the "hidden" light source seems to completely take precedent over the placed sun, making the lighting look all inconsistent and wonky: the side facing your placed sun will be shadowed, while the side facing away in the direction of AZ -130 will be brightly lit. It's a little better with ships, as the placed sun there takes precedent over the "hidden" one, rendering the light from the "hidden" one into a mild fill light effect, though it's still annoying that I can't get rid of it completely to create hard shadows when necessary.
One could start just sticking ones placed suns at AZ -130 to hide it, but that still gives no control over the extra lighting temp, specular color, fill, etc.
This doesn't seem to be an issue with premade maps, but them a lot of those have baked in features that can get in the way of the kind of careful deliberate map crafting that's the whole point of custom maps.
Anyone else noticed this?
Also apparently the forum lacks the ability to handle standard special chars like the degree symbol for some reason. It turned them all into question marks and I had to edit them out.
Post edited by connectamabob on
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It's effecting EVERYTHING equally: ships, planets, asteroids, everything. It's not just an extra sun: it's actually completely replacing the directional light from the placed sun. None of my color setting are having ANY effect. No matter what I do with my placed sun, all objects in scene are only displaying the lighting from the unmodifiable "hidden" sun. Nothing I can do makes any difference. AND I was wrong about it only effecting custom maps: premade maps are showing it too. placed suns are suns no longer light sources at all, and all maps have only one built-in unmodifiable solar light source.
I KNOW it wasn't like this pre-S7, because I spent a lot of time carefully crafting maps for pre-S7 foundry projects. I was able to actually control the direction, color temp, etc of the light in scene via the placed suns. I can't do that at all anymore. Placed suns are now just geometry, nothing more.