Thanks mqpiffle.  Im playing with your changes locally.  I like some changes (more ambiant light) and not others (changing of light direction so that it no longer matches the world lighting).  But I definitely think you are on the right track to increase the ambiant to make the units pop more and reduce the dark sides of the units.

mqpiffle can you please specify exactly which changes you made in the ElementalDefs file? I have done some changing of my own, and don't want to spend the time to try and compare the 2 in order to see which changes to port over to my file if I can avoid it...

Thanks

Bendiwolf

I can't tell you how much this annoyed me when I was building and importing 3d models for Stormworld into the game. As far as I can tell most models don't have lightmaps, only a very select few have them (I think ignys and air elementals in FE). So lightning was handled like they had a spotlight on one side of the model and no global lightning at all. Every model had to be turned around 8 times in-game just to see that every way the model was facing didn't make each side look ugly given the current status of the lightning.

The whole "bucket of paint" approach to lightning on models really is beneath a state of the art game like LH, but I guess it saves a ton on memory and gpu to not use lightmaps, not to mention development resources not having to make them in the first place. Heck, I know it saved me tons of time. It reduced the 3d pipeline to "what you see is what you get".