vrad

VRad or Valve Radiosity Simulator is the BSP compile tool responsible for generating lighting for your map. It is available for Windows and Linux.

Strata Source Features

Changes over CSGO/Portal2 VRad:

• Lighting that passes through world portals (See -PortalTraversalLighting)
• _removeaftercompile flag for lights so they only contribute to lighting the world. They will not be emitted into the world lighting lump.
• Improved texture shadows
• Huge performance improvements
• Expanded/removed limits
• Much more!

The following options have been added:

• -PortalTraversalLighting
• -PortalTraversalAO
• -aoscale
• -aoradius
• -aosamples
• -noao
• -StaticPropLightingFast

Help Text

Valve Software - vrad.exe AVX2 (Mar  9 2024)

      Valve Radiosity Simulator
Command line: "vrad.exe" "-game" "p2ce"

usage  : vrad [options...] bspfile
example: vrad c:\hl2\hl2\maps\test

Common options:

  -v (or -verbose): Turn on verbose output (also shows more command
  -bounce #       : Set max number of bounces (default: 100).
  -fast           : Quick and dirty lighting.
  -fastambient    : Per-leaf ambient sampling is lower quality to save compute time.
  -final          : High quality processing. equivalent to -extrasky 16.
  -finitefalloff  : use an alternative falloff model that falls off to exactly zero at the zero_percent_distance.
  -extrasky n     : trace N times as many rays for indirect light and sky ambient.
  -low            : Run as an idle-priority process.
  -mpi            : Use VMPI to distribute computations.
  -rederror       : Show errors in red.

  -vproject <directory> : Override the VPROJECT environment variable.
  -game <directory>     : Same as -vproject.

Other options:
  -dump           : Write debugging .txt files.
  -dumpnormals    : Write normals to debug files.
  -dumptrace      : Write ray-tracing environment to debug files.
  -threads        : Control the number of threads vbsp uses (defaults to the #
                    or processors on your machine).
  -lights <file>  : Load a lights file in addition to lights.rad and the
                    level lights file.
  -noextra        : Disable supersampling.
  -debugextra     : Places debugging data in lightmaps to visualize
                    supersampling.
  -smooth #       : Set the threshold for smoothing groups, in degrees
                    (default 45).
  -dlightmap      : Force direct lighting into different lightmap than
                    radiosity.
  -stoponexit      : Wait for a keypress on exit.
  -mpi_pw <pw>    : Use a password to choose a specific set of VMPI workers.
  -nodetaillight  : Don't light detail props.
  -centersamples  : Move sample centers.
  -luxeldensity # : Rescale all luxels by the specified amount (default: 1.0).
                    The number specified must be less than 1.0 or it will be
                    ignored.
  -loghash        : Log the sample hash table to samplehash.txt.
  -onlydetail     : Only light detail props and per-leaf lighting.
  -maxdispsamplesize #: Set max displacement sample size (default: 512).
  -softsun <n>    : Treat the sun as an area light source of size <n> degrees.                    Produces soft shadows.
                    Recommended values are between 0 and 5. Default is 0.
  -FullMinidumps  : Write large minidumps on crash.
  -chop           : Smallest number of luxel widths for a bounce patch, used on edges
  -maxchop      : Coarsest allowed number of luxel widths for a patch, used in face interiors
  -LargeDispSampleRadius: This can be used if there are splotches of bounced
                          light on terrain. The compile will take longer, but
                          it will gather light across a wider area.
  -StaticPropLighting   : generate baked static prop vertex lighting
  -StaticPropLightingFinal   : generate baked static prop vertex lighting (uses higher/final quality processing)
  -StaticPropPolys   : Perform shadow tests of static props at polygon precision
  -OnlyStaticProps   : Only perform direct static prop lighting (vrad debug option)
  -StaticPropNormals : when lighting static props, just show their normal vector
  -StaticPropBounce  : Enable static props to bounce light. Experimental option, doesn't work with VMPI right now.
  -textureshadows : Allows texture alpha channels to block light - rays intersecting alpha surfaces will sample the texture
  -noskyboxrecurse : Turn off recursion into 3d skybox (skybox shadows on world)
  -nossprops      : Globally disable self-shadowing on static props

  -PortalTraversalLighting : Allow light to teleport through (static) portals.
  -PortalTraversalAO       : Allow AO calculations to teleport through (static) portals. SLOW!

  -aoscale <float>  : Sets the ambient occlusion scale. Can't be used with -aoradius
  -aoradius <float> : Sets the ambient occlusion radius
  -aosamples <int>  : Sets the number ambient occlusion samples. Default is 32
  -ambient <vector> : Sets the ambient term. Can be used to tweak lightmap color
  -reflectivityscale <float> : Sets the reflectivity scale for all surfaces. Defaults to 1.0
  -disppatchradius <float> : Sets the maximum radius allowed for displacement patches
  -dispchop <float> : Number of luxel widths for a patch. Default is 8
  -ldr              : Enables generation of LDR lightmaps
  -hdr              : Enables generation of HDR lightmaps
  -both             : Enables generation of both LDR and HDR lightmaps
  -staticpropsamplescale <float> : Extra sampling factor for indirect light for static props
  -ambientfromleafcenters : Samples ambient lighting from the center of the leaf
  -LeafAmbientSampleReduction <float> : Reduction factor for ambient samples. Defaults to 1.0
  -unlitdetail      : Disables lighting for detail props