induced "flickering" - proper light placement techniques?

[exploiteddna]

hello guys and gals, ive been working hard on a new interior for a new mod im putting together and have run into a "snag" of sorts. This is certainly not the first time I have noticed this problem (in my mods and in other people's mods), but its finally bothering me to the point that I just need to ask the community for some advice.

 

It would be much easier to explain with a video but i dont have the patience for all that, so ill just explain it..

 

imagine youre standing in your cell while in-game (it can be seen from ck sometimes too). If you position your character at just the right distance from a placed light (SolitudeInnWindowtDefault, for example), you can make the light turn on and off by simply looking up and down or side to side... no need to actually move your character, just stand still.

 

This does not always happen, however. Sometimes I can place lights throughout a room and I don't get this effect. When it does happen, I try everything under the sun to make it stop. Nothing has worked. I attempt to decrease the radius, FOV, and fade. I have tried using less lights, more lights, different types of lights, shadows, no shadows, etc etc.

 

Nothing seems to have an affect on this. Surely I can't be the only one who experiences this behavior. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[exploiteddna]

nobody? cmon :biggrin:

[Hangman4358]

http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Lights_and_FX

 

http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Optimization

 

IDK why beth had the second link come first since in their tutorial series, I feel like you should read the first one first and then the second one.

 

What it all boils down to: learn how skyrim handles light and then you won't have problems. But hell, even in some default beth content they didn't optimize light placement very well.

 

The CK wiki does have a lot of info btw. people deride it for it's lack of info but almost all the stuff is there, people just don't know how to read it, especially the papyrus API /rant

[exploiteddna]

ok cool. yeah ive read through that first one on lighting an fx but have not seen the second one you listed. I just looked over it briefly and it looks like it has a lot of good information, not just with lighting.

 

i guess i was hoping someone would be able to tell me exactly what type of oversight or placement mistakes will cause the scenario i described. like, is it an indication of too many lights, or overlapping radii, etc.

 

Anyways, I appreciate your response. maybe one of the optimization techniques in that second link will help.

 

anyone else willing to chime in?

[Hangman4358]

Quote

Shadows generate additional polygons and only four can be visible at any given time, so be careful of how many of these you use. Too many shadow-casting lights will quickly cause performance problems and visual bugs.

Quote

The number of lights in a space affects performance as well. Try not let any object be lit by more than two lights. You can get a feel for how many references a light affects by toggling the "L" hotkey. You can also look for lighting issues in a space by right clicking in the render window and selecting "Render Window Properties". Go to the "Shaders" tab and check the box that says "# of lights". Fig 7.3 shows an example space that has too many lights. The colors represent the number of lights hitting a each reference. Green represents an unlit piece and red means there are too many lights on a piece and performance issues are likely. It is good practice to make sure nothing shows up red when lighting your dungeon.

Quote

http://www.creationkit.com/images/thumb/9/9e/OptimizationFig3.jpg/157px-OptimizationFig3.jpg

Fig. 7.3: References with red/purple shading have too many lights hitting them.

Now I have even done all the reading for you and picked out the important parts :P

[exploiteddna]

lol. ive read all of that already and, while useful information, did not say explicitly say what causes the flickering ive described. At any rate, it seems that there was a light in the "basement" that was shining up through the floor and its radius was overlapping the radius of the problem light. in this case i just decreased the radius of the light in the basement and now its all good. If i run into a situation where i need to prevent light from coming up through the floor, i wonder if there are any game objects that can block light. collision for light?