Techniques for even indoor lighting

[Trude]

When working with a dim outdoor light environment, the job of lighting indoor environments is quickly becoming a nightmare. Relying on entities for 100% of the lighting causes all sorts of problems with shadows.
Is it possible to use multiple light environments for individual rooms and then use light entities to detail the light props?

[Zeq]

You can only use one light_environment per map. You can play around with the ambient key value in it to make the shadows cast by it brighter. I also recommend you look into light-emitting textures as they are a lot easier to place out and often produces better lighting-effects. Here's an old tutorial on it: http://source.gamebanana.com/tuts/4811

What kind of problems are you getting with the shadows?

[Trude]

What kind of problems are you getting with the shadows?

Mostly that the shadows dominate large portions of the room since there are few light sources.
When examining 4starters, I noticed several large rooms use a single light entity that covers the whole room and the 0% falloff at the edges. Haven't tried it yet, but I expect this will solve my problems. As for the glowing textures, I have used them in one location for ambience. Are you saying that you can make a light emitting texture without it glowing?

[Zeq]

Yeah just using a single light entity for every room works if it's big and evenly shaped. But also remember that 4starters almost exclusively uses glowing textures for the lighting. You could make a light emitting material which is not glowing but it would look really bad. I know that many jump mappers out there just view the light design of a map as a hassle, but if you want a good looking one it will take just as much time as making the jumps themselves.

[Splash4Damage]

...I know that many jump mappers out there just view the light design of a map as a hassle...

Yeah, lighting is only the most important part of any map so why care about it Kappa