Editing Light (map compiling)

'''Light''' is one of the stages of [[map compiling]].  It calculates lighting and shadows for a [[Quake file formats|bsp file]] previously generated by [[QBSP]].

==What Light Does==  
Using the [[light (entity)|light entities]] from the [[entity lump]] of the bsp file, it precalculates the lighting on each [[surface]] in the level, and saves that data as [[lightmap|lightmaps]] in the bsp file.

Some modified Light tools can also calculate [[colored lighting]] for the level and save it seperately in a [[Quake file formats|lit file]].

==Using Light==
Light is a command-line tool, generally named light.exe.  You can invoke it from a command prompt, via a shortcut or batch file, or from the "compile" or "build" menus of some [[level editor|level editors]].

===Command-line options===
TODO

EDIT: Acient Linux user attempting to fill in the gaps.

If you have the tyrutils package and you can't figure out what to do because all the guides are for the windows executables with all three tools built in and a GUI. All the tools have been compiled already and can be located in the bin folder. For instance light you simply open the terminal in the bin directory along with BQSP, Light and Vis. Execute the file like so

"./light"

It will show you the available options.

[[File:.http://i.imgur.com/w0OKJ7F.png]]

===Error Messages and Warnings===
TODO

===Updated Versions===
In addition to [[id Software]]'s official Light, there have been various unofficial versions that improve on the original or add additional features.  For a list of Light variants, see [[Mapping tools]].