Lighting (level editor)

Lighting can be added to a level in a few ways.

Light Entities
Light Entities are the most direct way to add light. The following subtypes are available:

Point
Point lights cast light and shadows in all directions. The area of light they provide is sphere shaped. Range: Radius of the sphere, in units.

Spot
Spot lights cast light and shadows in only one direction, in a cone shape. SpotAngle: Angular size of the cone, in degrees. The maximum value is 180. Range: Length of the cone, in units.

No Shadow
A light that does not cast shadows.

Spot No Shadow
A light that does not cast shadows.

Light Entity Properties
These properties are shared between all subtypes. Intensity: The amount of light produced. Hue, Saturation (Sat), Brightness (Bright): Together these values determine the light's color. They all range from 0 to 1. BaseColor: Shows a preview of the light's color and RGB values.

Decals
Some decals also produce light. They have the same types of light as Light entities (Point, Spot, No Shadow, and Spot No Shadow) and have the same Intensity, Range, and Angle properties.

Reflections
Emissive textures and lightbar decals have very bright reflections. Despite not producing any light, they can make an area seem bright just from the Reflection probe. Split planes are usually required to create appropriate chunks and reflection probes for this to work.

Off-angle Lights
Sometimes a light will point in a wildly different direction in-game than in the editor. This is probably caused by a rounding error, and can be corrected by moving geometry slightly in some way, such as:
 * Rotating level segments by 360 degrees
 * Rotating a decal by 180 degrees and mirroring it
 * Rotating a light entity slightly

Miscellaneous

 * Light Entities work as expected when placed out of bounds, even though it causes a validation error.
 * Shadow casting lights have a significant performance cost. Point lights in particular act as 6 spot lights for casting shadows. No Shadow and Spot No Shadow light types perform better and should be used as much as possible instead.
 * No Shadow lights pass through segment sides as well as decals.
 * Light entities are visible in reflection probes.