Mover leaving an ugly shadow behind it

[Sat42]

Hey everyone!

New problem here: I have a lift which leaves a dark patch on the ground when it kicks off.

How do you avoid that? I actually remember a lot of maps having this issue, even some of the "leet" ones (though admittedly it's not a huge problem).

Fun fact: that lift was made early in development, and for hundreds of builds, there was no "shadow" left behind, but now yes! It's like I read somewhere that the engine can "improve" slight oversights after several builds (like the lighting on doors can vary ever so slightly from one build to another even if you don't change any parameters there).

[SteadZ]

If it's 227, then you can make it a dynamic light mover, which basically means that the light and shadows will move according to the movers position.

I've tried it with a lift in one of my maps, and it works pretty nicely.

.......
SZ
.......

[Doublez-Down]

Adjust the "world raytrace key" from 0 to 1

[Sat42]

Thanks for the replies guys!

If it's 227, then you can make it a dynamic light mover, which basically means that the light and shadows will move according to the movers position.

The mover is set to be dynamically lit, unfortunately it only affects the mover itself because yeah, I only use UT at the moment. So the shadow affects a particular keyframe and doesn't move about.

Adjust the "world raytrace key" from 0 to 1

It works! but then there's that shadow up there... and then I remembered somthing along these lines in the "Lighting Tips" of the Level Design section of the USP main site:

Hellscrag adds: Actually, that's the BrushRaytraceKey Lightning_Hunter refers to. WorldRaytraceKey effects the way the world around the mover is lit. Sometimes you don't want your mover to cast a shadow in either keyframe. If you give it an additional keyframe that isn't part of the movement sequence, you can move the brush up into the sky where it will not obstruct the raytracing of any surrounding lights. You can do this with regular geometry as well - simply add it as a mover that doesn't go anywhere. This is why the cross on the roof of the church in Na Pali Haven appears as a mover - so that it casts no shadow on the roof around it.

My question is: how do I add an additional keyframe that isn't part of the movement sequence?

Thanks again for the help!