Night Texture Control?

[Guest rwooton]

I am really confused, and if someone can help, I'd really appreciate it.I'm a fairly experienced repainter, but there is one question I've never been able to get answered. And that is, what controls the night textures? All the repaints I do have _t files and _l files. The _l files are the night lights. But on some planes, the lights come on when the system time changes to dusk, and others they come on only when you active the landing lights. (Which I really hate!)Can someone tell me how to set that, and what program I need (if any) to do it with?ThanksRick Wooton

[Jim Robinson 122]

There's a really good lightmap tutorial by David Rawlins on EvolveAI's site which is down for remodelling at the moment. Fortunately the direct link to the tutorial still works, check it out here:http://www.evolveai.com/tutorials/lightmaps.htmlShould answer your questions, I think :) .Jim

[Guest rwooton]

Thanks.I saw that, but not sure what he has wrong, but it's like it's written backwards. He said "The black/gray areas will allow the corresponding areas of the lightmap to be 'on' whenever the lights are turned on. Areas of the alpha channel that remain white will only be 'on' when the landing lights are active." But that's backwards.What I had was a white background with blacked out windows. That should have been right by what he said, but it only worked when the landing lights were on. So I tried all white with no black windows, and that didn't work either. Then I went back to the original and just inverted everything so I had a black background with white windows, and it now works. (At least it doesn't require the landing lights to be on.)But I know there has to be more. The PMDG planes for example, those lights come on when the panel light is on, so there has to be some kind of switch in the .air file or model.cfg file I'm guessing that can assign that function to a switch. There also seems to be some difference in whether the file has a capital letter in the name - such as _l.bmp vs _L.bmp.Does anyone know?Thanks for you help! It's much better than having it come on with the landing lights.Rick Wooton

[Jim Robinson 122]

I don't know what to tell you, Rick. We are talking about the alpha channel, right? I did a lightmap for a Posky 767 v4 using that tutorial, the cabin windows and the logo light beam thingy on the vertical stab both have black areas on the alpha channel; they light up when you turn on any lights (nav, bcn, pnl, strobe, wing, recog, etc). There's also a beam that shines on the fwd part of the lower fuselage which has no underlying black on the alpha channel (pure white in this area). It only illuminates with the landing lights.I wonder if lightmap behavior has to be defined in the model (.mdl) itself and maybe you're working with a model that doesn't have it defined correctly?Here's a copy of the lightmap I mentioned if you want to check it out:http://www.cat-tamer.com/downloads/os767v4fuse1_l.zipbest wishes,Jim

[Guest rwooton]

That very well could be (.mdl file).I looked at several planes and they all seem to be a little different.Here's what I had that only worked with the landing lights:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/166772.gifAnd after turning it around to this, it works with any lights:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/166774.gifThe two squares in the left corner were the nose gear, and by leaving them black, they illuminate when the landing lights hit them.Rick