Signs at night

[thingfishs]

Hi,
how do I illuminate a sign at night time so that it's logo can still be read?

[Girafe]

Hi,
how do I illuminate a sign at night time so that it's logo can still be read?

I you use 3dsmax, you can try the option self illumination and you don't need any spot 

[thingfishs]

thanks Girafe,

is there a way to achieve the same with gmax?

(I do have Max, but my current project is in gmax) I played around with illumination in the material navigator but it didn't seem to work at night...

[c1bmmonom]

Self illuminate too will works, under sphere of material is a option with self illuminate color and value, you also choose value and give it 100!!!

[thingfishs]

thanks, that's what I've been doing, however (unless I'm doing it wrong) it only makes it too bright by day and not bright at night. What I am after is not bright at day and bright at night...

[tag_one]

Well self illumination is an option, I normally use a bit different approach

When I make a sign, I first model a pane or a very thin box where I want the sign. I then add the sign as a texture to it. Apart from the normal defuse texture with the sign I'll also add an opacity map for the sections of the sign that need to be transparent. After that's done, I'll add an omni light in front of the sign. With the exclude option I make it only illuminate the sign. So only the sign lights up, and not the wall behind it. To add some nice effects I add a second omni which only lights the wall and not the sign (exclude option as well). If you play a bit with it you can make it look like the sign creates light it self

Very small tutorial, but I hope I helped you
- Merijn

[thingfishs]

much appreciated tag one

I had a play with your suggestions and also in the process figured out what I was doing wrong with the self illumination function - I wasn't reselecting my texture from the box next to it. So I have options. So far self illumination looks better but is clearly a lot more limited in function. Thanks for pointing out the exclude command - it's right there but I've never thought to click on it, so handy...

One thing I didn't understand was the purpose of the alpha in this situation. (I made an alpha that kept the logo and excluded the orange, but I couldn't see how it helped)

Here is an example of one of my signs:



These "glow" orange at night. Does the nature of this sign change your recommendations at all?

[thingfishs]

Hi,
I'm still lost trying to achieve a good result via either suggestions. The illuminate thing worked once but I haven't been able to replicate that success (what I was doing was entering 100 next to colour, underneath self illumination, and then selecting the same texture using the box to the right. This seemed to work once....)

Also suddenly, and I don't know if it's connected to any of this, my renders are turning up almost completely grey.



This seems to be mostly HD renders. Can anyone shed any light on what's going on here?

[cogeo]

@tag_one: The Exclude feature does not work in gmax.

@thingfishs: Sorry, but I don't understand exactly. I mean how it looks OK in the day view but not in the night one? Why not simply add a light? In RTMT V3 (dl the zip version) you can see a sign of London buses, and it does have nightlighting. Nothing special, I just put a light there. It looks quite OK at night, and it's not even HD. If you render in HD, you will get better results, I guess. I could take a look, if you send me the BAT (along with its textures).

[thingfishs]

@tag_one: The Exclude feature does not work in gmax.

ah, I figured I was just doing something wrong. Wouldn't be the first time... 


Thanks cogeo, , I'll try to explain what's going on a little better.

The day shot is no better



in fact it's worse in that it contains no texture at all; whereas the night one has the texture faintly recognisable.

This is occurring to objects that were previously rendering fine. To test I made a box in a brand new scene with a texture applied. With a normal SD render it came out grey. I repeated the process, the render worked. I tried the same with HD: all grey. HD renders have otherwise been working fine.

As for the nightlighting, I'm just trying to get my head around my different options (without great success thus far )

[cogeo]

The day shot is no better
.
.
in fact it's worse in that it contains no texture at all; whereas the night one has the texture faintly recognisable.

This is occurring to objects that were previously rendering fine. To test I made a box in a brand new scene with a texture applied. With a normal SD render it came out grey. I repeated the process, the render worked. I tried the same with HD: all grey. HD renders have otherwise been working fine.

This must be a quite common problem, resulting from the scene file being corrupted. Try taking the steps described in this post.

[thingfishs]

Brilliant, thanks heaps (←common South Australian expression for LOTS) cogeo

btw I followed your steps on that page without success (ie merge didn't work), but gottago's steps did (new box and applying the textures 1 by 1 followed by delete). Sanity prevails.

[cogeo]

btw I followed your steps on that page without success

Strange! Can I take a look into the BAT (old and new version please)?

[thingfishs]

sure, here are the project and model files for the before & after: http://rapidshare.com/files/425386748/-.zip

[cogeo]

Aaah. there are no textures in the zip, so I can't open them.
And by "before" and "after" I meant the problematic one and that after gottago-suggested changes.

[thingfishs]

Of course , here are the textures: http://rapidshare.com/files/425397302/textures.zip

And by "before" and "after" I meant the problematic one and that after gottago-suggested changes.

those are the versions in the zip

[cogeo]

OK, here is what I found:
- Version DA4 (the one I got) does NOT work for me! The yellow rays aren't visible either. Maybe it worked only once, in the scene you had open in gmax! Can you check it again?
- The reason why renders didn't work is because the materials in the list have a blue ball icon instead of red, which means that the "Show Map in Viewport" option was set to "Off". Set it to "On", it seems to affect not just the viewport.
- I'm not sure if you want to make a simple sign, or one with internal lighting. In the former case, first of I think the model looks too thick, and the self-illumination feature is not needed. And the lights are placed at ground level! Move them upwards (rather a little above the sign height), preferably move them a little off-centre, set Multiplier back to 1.0, and use the attenuation feature (I would suggest that you arrange them so that the sign lies between the near and far attenuation thresholds). Experiment until you find a satisfactory combination of settings. In the latter case, I think the external lights shouldn't be used. The check-box in the "Self-Illumination" panel isn't checked, so self-illumination doesn't work. Check this to activate it.

Tip: If you want to use self-illumination, and you can't find settings that look OK for both day and night, you can make two models, one for the day and one for the night, and use Resource Key Type 4 instead of 1 in the prop exemplar, along with the NightTimeChange property (this is NOT a timed prop).

Oooh, and the method I described DOES work (corrects gray items and deletes redundant materials, along with other fixes)! I always do so before exporting a large BAT.

[thingfishs]

Hooray, I can access the site again. I replied to this a day ago but between composing the letter and attempting to send it the site vanished.

Yes, DA4 works for me. I see what you mean about the blue ball, but even having selected "show in viewport", it seems to randomly be deselected. I have had problems resolving it via either instructions. I will go through and reconnect all the materials only to find one doesn't work. I open the project again, fix that one, but now everything else isn't connected. I've never had these issues before, the materials I've assigned to objects have always stayed assigned. Now every time I close a project I'm having to reconnect everything. Does anyone know what could have brought about this change?

I was confused by the check box next to illumination as the colour the popped up suggested, in my mind, that you would be getter a one tone illumination. But I get it now, thanks.

The boxes were on the ground as the problems presented themselves mid experimenting.

I'm sure your method works sometimes, but so far for me both methods have only been working sometimes. 

[cogeo]

I have never had the problem of the Show In Vieport option being deselected by itself.

I have tested DA4 again (the one in the zip) and neither preview nor export works, in SD or HD. I mean preview or export without doing anyhting else, like reassigning materials or change the blue ball to red.

The procedure I described should be performed before exporting. If you make changes, esp in the materials or previewing, this can cause corruption again. The material editor is really VERY buggy!

Never save your file after previewing or exporting, it saves all these errors and temporary materials. If you want to preview or export. save your file BEFORE, and when it asks to save the changes (which changes indeed?) say NO. After exporting you can reload the scene (or better yet, close gmax/BAT and open it again), if you want to continue working. Periodically, you will have to perform the Merge procedure again. This has always worked for me.

You can find a fixed version of your BAT here. Total time needed: 1 min (incl setting the Show In Vieport options on).

[thingfishs]

Thanks cogeo, I'll try your version out. I have been able to get it all working, yet in game there is no lights at all. The main sign has lights as well as there being spots under the verandah of the building. I'm fairly confident I've set all to light:true, but I'll recheck. Is there anything else that can cause all lights not to work? (as the shot shows, my other custom BATs have night lights)



Cancel that: After a closer look I realised some are working but are just too low; also I forgot to apply lights to the base texture. I couldn't see why the main sign wasn't working though...