Legacy:Corona

A corona is created by making a light that has a skin associated with it. It is often erroneously called lens flare. To see a corona through a Static Mesh change Collision>bBlockZeroExtentTraces to false.

UT

Here are the steps for making a corona in UT:

With Actor Light

1. Place a Light (UT) wherever you want the corona to appear.
2. Open the Texture Browser and select a corona texture. There are some nice ones in GenFX and City.
3. Open the Actor Properties for the light. Set the following properties:

Group	Property	Value	Explanation
Display	Skin		Click Use to give your light the texture you just picked out.
Display	DrawScale	0.1...0.3	Scales the corona image; with 1.0 it's rather large. One unfortunate consequence of this is that this property also scales the actor icon in UnrealEd, making corona actors hard to find.
LightColor	Brightness	0.0	Set so that your corona won't also cast light. You'll need to use a second light for that.
LightColor	LightHue		Set a colour for your corona (if you are using a white skin that is, if you have a colored one then just leave it).
Lighting	bCorona	True	bLensFlare was used with Unreal1 and is obsolete in UnrealTournament.
Lighting	LightRadius	Anything	sets how far the corona will be visible in game

The map must be rebuilt (including geometry) to see the effect.

With Actor ScaledSprite

Instead of the Actor Light you can use the Actor ScaledSprite. Set the Display properties Texture to a corona texture (see above) and Style to STY_Translucent. The advantage is that this corona is easy to find in UnrealEd.

UT 2004

Here are the steps for making a corona in UT2004:

This is probably the same in UT2003

1. Place a Light wherever you want the corona to appear.

1. Open the Texture Browser and select a corona texture. There are some in "EmitterTextures.Flares" and "EpicParticles.Flares".

1. Open the Actor Properties for the light. Set the following properties:

Group	Property	Value	Explanation
Display	Skin		Click Use to give your light the texture you just picked out.
Display	DrawScale	0.1...0.3	Scales the corona image; with 1.0 it's rather large. One unfortunate consequence of this is that this property also scales the actor icon in UnrealEd, making corona actors hard to find.
LightColor	Brightness	0.0	Set so that your corona won't also cast light. You'll need to use a second light for that.
LightColor	LightHue		Set a colour for your corona (if you are using a white skin that is, if you have a colored one then just leave it).
Lighting	bCorona	True	bLensFlare was used with Unreal1 and is obsolete in UnrealTournament.
Lighting	LightRadius	anything	sets how far the corona will be visible in game

The map must be rebuilt (including geometry) to see the effect.

Other Properties

Other Corona properties you might be interested in.

Group	Property	Value Type	Explanation
Lighting	bDirectionalCorona (UT2k4)	Bool	Activates/Deactivates Directional Coronas
Corona	CoronaRotation (UT2k4)	Float	The corona seems to be rotated by the amount of unreal units the camera is away from it in unreal degrees multiplied by the value of CoronaRotation. So if you enter 1 and you move 16384 units away from it or towards it it rotates 16384 (=90°)
Corona	CoronaRotationOffset (UT2k4)	Float	The corona is rotated by the value in unreal degrees (16384 = 90°)
Corona	MaxCoronaSize	Float	The maximum size the corona can achieve
Corona	MinCoronaSize	Float	The minimum size the corona must achieve
Corona	UseOwnFinalBlend	Bool	...???...
Display	ScaleGlow	Float	Rate of fadein/out

Caveats

• Coronas can only be seen through masked semisolid or nonsolid brush.
• A corona textured light can also be used as a light emitting source, but the corona will only be seen in game as far as the radius is set.
• To make a small radius light seen from afar, use 2 lights. Set the corona textured light actor brightness -> 0.

Viewing Coronas in UnrealEd

(Could someone confirm which rendering modes display them in UnrealEd?)

1. Type camera open into the UnrealEd Console
2. Maximize the floating viewport
3. The viewort should use accelerated rendering and show lens flares.
4. Press Alt+Tab to return to UnrealEd.

Caveats

Birelli: Software rendering in UED does not display coronas as D3D does. As for looking at it in the editor I always just right-click the top bar of my 3-D viewport and go down to D3D, I'm not sure what this camera open thing does though, maybe it's better

Tarquin: "Camera Open" opens a floating viewport you can maximize to the entire screen. It's good for people with a dinosauresque 2-card setup who can only run OpenGL fullscreen (like me)

Generic Badass: Go into advanced properties, rendering, software rendering, coronas = true. then you can see coronas in software mode in UT and UnrealEd.

Comments

Tarquin: Do we need to update this for UT2003?

MythOpus: I think So. Unfornately, I haven't mapping lately to see whats changed...

SirKline: That worked for me in UT2004. Hope, its clear now.

SuperApe: Does anyone know about a limit on the number of visible coronas in UT2003? (A friend is saying he can't see more than 64)

MythOpus: The properties of a light now have added options. One of them is ' Coronas '. In this list you can choose the min. distance and max distance of the corona as well as the Size of it.

Related Topics

• Lighting topic page
• Light (UT) class reference
• Actor (UT)/Lighting – Reference page for Lighting and LightColor properties