This may be prefered as the static light information is ALREADY prebaked in the lightmap, however it means you cannot receive direction information from the lights. New feature - Snap Marked Objects To Grid - use the TOOLS menu or CTRL+ B. This feature does not modify the size of the objects or their relative positions. Why You Should Get It: If you'd like a sturdy motion-sensing solar light, our testers found this to be one of the best solar lights in this category.

Added "show connections" feature to the View menu. When ON, the 2D views display lines from targets to their triggers. We chose the AloftSun Solar Motion Sensor Outdoor Lights as the overall best outdoor solar lights for their durability, water resistance, and motion-sensing capabilities. If you're looking for a set of string lights, testers loved the Brightech Ambience Pro Solar Powered Outdoor String Lights, because they held up to water and freezing temperatures. And, while the bulbs are made of plastic, testers said they were clear and didn't look inexpensive. Added more color difference to objects (monsters, etc), and added some missing attributes to some objects. Note: The Old-Aperture indicator lights overlay is normally a 64x64 texture with a single neon stripe. The solar string lights are meant to be durable with their shatterproof material and Brightech's WeatherTite technology. While no official waterproof rating is given, this technology is designed to help the lights handle 50 mile-per-hour winds along with rain and snow. They're also resistant to temperatures as hot as 122 degrees Fahrenheit. The bulbs are made of plastic, but one tester said they are "clear, pretty, and don't seem cheap."We observed that the lights worked well, even after a stay in the freezer. They withstood the impact of a golf ball and resisted water damage. With a rating of IPX7, these have an impressive ability to resist water. This rating is generally given to lights that are waterproof and can even be submerged in water for a short time. Place a prop_indicator_panel. Rotate it to match the orientation of the surface, and position it one unit in front of the nodraw tile. Set the following keyvalues:

Lighting Tutorial - Covers entities & variables with examples (Archived versionretrieved on 6 September, 2016)Be wary of adjusting this option by accident, as a single face with a very large lightmap bias can effectively destroy the lightmap density for the rest of your map! If you have bad shadows and your console is reporting 'Mesh with material is extremely large in lightmap (x.x%)' with a large value, this may be why. You can go to the coordinates listed in console to get an idea of where these faces may be, and use mat_luxels 1 in game to find suspiciously dense faces. Lightmap Scale does not affect dynamic shadow detail/diffusion (lightmap scale equivalent would be 1 luxel/unit). Confirm: this is actually static, right? and not dynamic? Glowing Textures World brush and func_detail surfaces with a light-emitting material (as defined in lights.rad , either the one in your mod directory or the one in sourcesdk/bin/) applied will cast volumetric light in a 180° cone. Static Light Receivers Brushes The "Lightmap Scale" tool in the Hammer Face Edit Dialog can be used to control how sharp or diffuse the lightmap of a brush surface will be—an effect most noticeable between areas of high contrast, e.g. shadows. Note that, while adding extra light sources will not significantly affect performance, decreasing lightmap scale (i.e., increasing resolution) will more directly increase map file size and memory usage. prop_static Unlike other model entities, prop_statics are lit statically: a lighting value is stored for every vertex, and the model's collision mesh (or, optionally, reference mesh) is used to calculate lightmap shadows. There are the following options: Keep in Mind: Multiple strands of lights cannot be connected together; each requires its own solar panel. But you can hang more than one strand next to each other.

Movable objects (such as most entity models) never cast lightmap shadows, but do cast dynamic shadows (when shadow_control is enabled). Only world brushes and prop_statics never cast dynamic shadows (though they do cast lightmap shadows). Can have a maximum of four stationary lights shining on one surface at a time or the overlapping lights will have no shadows (best to keep it to one or two to make things cheaper to render)

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You can COPY objects while moving them by holding down SHIFT before you release the left mouse button.