SC4 Devotion Forum Archives

SimCity 4 General Discussion and Tutorials => Tips, Tricks and Tutorials => Questions About Custom Content Creation => Topic started by: Rott on December 08, 2020, 06:39:29 PM

Title: Lighting not showing up
Post by: Rott on December 08, 2020, 06:39:29 PM
Pretty much as the title suggests, placed a light but it's not there and not showing up in the preview either, anyone have any idea what happened (the building also did not turn dark)

Title: Re: Lighting not showing up
Post by: mattb325 on December 08, 2020, 11:35:44 PM
Your building is coming along nicely: make sure that you put 'nitelite' in front of the Spot01 (so, nitelite_Spot01) for it to render when you click the day & night preview button.
Also, with a spotlight, you'll need to adjust the brightness (the default is usually fairly dark) and angle the spot light to the door...at the moment it's mostly illuminating the blank space around the bat which will make it harder to see any results
Title: Re: Lighting not showing up
Post by: Rott on December 09, 2020, 10:17:26 AM
I have a feeling I'm going to hate lighting...

So this 'multiplier' option increases the brightness? Seems like anything about 3 makes it looks awful, and 3 itself doesn't look much better than 1, am I doing this right?
Title: Re: Lighting not showing up
Post by: mattb325 on December 09, 2020, 10:47:52 AM
I won't lie....lighting is a pain  :D

The multiplier is indeed the correct one to use, but a single decimal place can make all the difference.

In my gmax days, I used to spend about 30% of my time modelling, 50% texturing (you'll find that textures need to be adjusted in a photoshop like program to look any good) and the remaining time lighting...sometimes more. This is an area where you will need to play around to get it right for you.

Try angling the spotlight a little more and dragging it back from the door and then start fiddling with the multipliers.

You can also look at using more advanced parameters in the spotlight and attenuation parameters (available in the same menu as the light) and these will help sharpen, narrow, broaden or soften the areas that are lit.

Unfortunately, with gmax there isn't really a magic setting: the colour and type of material that is being lit + the placement of the spotlight dictate that each time you must make an adjustment
Title: Re: Lighting not showing up
Post by: Rott on December 09, 2020, 03:10:32 PM
Yep, just took some fiddling, but it finally looks good. Thanks for all your tips, can't believe after like 16 years I actually made a lot for the game :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Lighting not showing up
Post by: Rott on December 14, 2020, 01:36:06 PM
Ok, I have the basics down, but now I want to be able to do some more advanced night lighting stuff, the defualt night windows Gmax uses are ok for small residential windows but I want to illuminate signs and give store fronts some actual depth, how do I go about doing stuff like this, is there a guide for it anywhere:
Title: Re: Lighting not showing up
Post by: mattb325 on December 14, 2020, 02:20:46 PM
To do this is quite fiddly (as if nightlighting weren't already fiddly enough)

The tutorial for it is here: https://community.simtropolis.com/omnibus/simcity-4/bat-lot-editor-tutorials/nightlighting-in-gmax-for-objects-and-windows-r202/ (https://community.simtropolis.com/omnibus/simcity-4/bat-lot-editor-tutorials/nightlighting-in-gmax-for-objects-and-windows-r202/)

When I was using the bat, I only ever used this method once or twice, and that was almost a decade ago. The tutorial has a lot of broken images and formatting issues, and because I haven't done it for so long, I won't be much help trying explain the little steps in between.

There is another method: you use a mix of the nite-windows & spots+omnis for the signs and you light up the ground through your transparent glass, like this tutorial, here: https://community.simtropolis.com/omnibus/simcity-4/bat-lot-editor-tutorials/nightlighting-windows-in-gmax-r68/ (https://community.simtropolis.com/omnibus/simcity-4/bat-lot-editor-tutorials/nightlighting-windows-in-gmax-r68/)

That will probably be the easier for you to do.

The other way I got things to light up was by using very reflective, self-illuminating materials. These would be on during the day, but were set low enough to not be too noticeable, and then I would use coloured omnis with different parameters to achieve different effects. EG
(https://www.simtropolis.com/objects/screens/monthly_08_2012/694fa4cea47b9e078ade3ced6439af19-cruiseship2.jpg)
(https://www.simtropolis.com/objects/screens/monthly_02_2013/e60480388b9120027aad3ccfd62510a9-spar-nite-.jpg)
(https://www.simtropolis.com/objects/screens/monthly_02_2013/65a5d0eddc5327e4be480ebe0a54edee-ucb5.jpg)
(https://www.simtropolis.com/objects/screens/monthly_10_2012/e8228add53f82a8f6fb15303a396c678-chezmondo2.jpg)

All of these bats were done in gmax.
Title: Re: Lighting not showing up
Post by: Rott on December 14, 2020, 03:45:20 PM
Lighting sounds like as much of a journey as structuring and texturizing, this is going to be interesting, thanks again Matt  :thumbsup: