Night Textures Tutorial

[Guest]

Hi all!Could somebody tell where can I find that tutorial that explains the step-by-step making of scenery night textures???Thanks,Jean.

[spotlope 0]

Hi Jean,Do you need a tutorial on how to actually make the textures or how to make them work in various scenery programs? thanks,

[Guest]

Hi!I was looking for a tutorial on how to MAKE night textures... You see, I was making day textures from real shots of the terminal... now, I have night shots of the same terminal but not taken at the same position, so, it would be odd to simply replace the day shots for the night ones, do you understand... so I was looking for a way to make night textures from the original day texure I have... Is this possible??? Or would you have any suggestions for me???Thank you very much Spotlope!Jean.

[Guest]

I was stumped by this one for awhile too until I stumbled on it somewhere.Just take your original texture (probably safer to use a back up), and then simply adjust the brightness and contrast down to the night lighting you want. I've found that with Paint Shop it works pretty good at -75 at both. Then save it as [Texturename]_lm.bmpGets a little trickier if you want to light the windows though or certain details but thats a whole other ball of wax.Paul J. Mainville

[Guest]

Exactly!My goal is to light p the windows! how can I do that???Thanks,Jean

[Guest]

U have a graphics program. if so, its easy, if not, get one. Theres a free one out there at www.gimp.orgMost of the programs like photoshop or photopaint or gimp, have renderer filters for lighting. In general, for windows, I draw a selection around the window, in one case where I may want it to appear lit up I'd create a new layer, and paint that layer within the selection a shade of yellow, then set the transparency of that layer to maybe 50%...maybe less...so shadows or images within the room still show.One technique I like for the emergency type low level lighting I'd expect in a restaurant that is closed for the night, would be to draw a selection around the window, and then apply a semitransparent dark layer to everything else. Experiment, invent your own methods.Bob Bernstein

[Guest fame]

Hi Jean:You'll find your tutorial listed in the archive below.I hope this helps in some small way, visit the URL below, for additional ideas and suggestions. Good luckTom G, Sr.

[Guest]

Hi Bob!by coincidence I start doing that already, and it seems to be working!Thank you very much!Jean.

[Guest GerrishGray]

Hi guysThe first point to note is that you do NOT need to create an _lm version of your texture unless you want to add night-lighting effects (which is what is wanted here). If the scene/object is unlit, then FS will make an excellent job of darkening the object appropriately at night without any help from you.A word of warning, though: some design programs assume that you are going to use an _lm version of your texture at night and create code that tries to use such a texture even if it is not present! The result is that the object is then displayed as untextured solid black at night! (This is a fault in these design programs, NOT a fault in FS).There are two ways of creating textures to add lighting effects at night:-[ol][li]The first is the _lm texture, which completely replaces the original at night time with a copy that is darkened and has night-lighting effects painted onto it. This is the method most commonly used for scenery. Personally, I use PaintshopPro 7 to create them - it has built-in tools for darkening the texture and adding lighting effects on the Effects, Illumination menu. The options are Lights, which adds spotlighting and floodlighting effects to the texture, and Sunburst, which is very effective for lighting windows at night (you have to select the shape of the window before using it). Note that that these tools should be used directly on the original texture, and the modified copy saved with the suffix _lm added to its name. Do NOT darken the texture first because the illumination tool will do it for you, and the information about the original colour is needed to get the best appearance for the areas that are illuminated. I believe that Adobe Photoshop has similar facilities.[/li][li]The other method is to add lighting superimposed onto the normal day texture using an _L bitmap. These bitmaps have just the lighting patterns on a black background and FS uses them as an overlay for the normal day texture, arithmetically adding the _L lighting effects to the otherwise night-darkened day texture. This has some potential advantages for ensuring that the unlit parts are correctly darkened using the built-in process in FS, instead of being overridden by an artificially-darkened _lm version. It is used mainly with aircraft models - I haven't yet tried it with scenery models. The method is not available for ground textures and can only be used with the new floating point command set - it doesn't work with the older LoadBitmap() command.[/li][/ol]Hope this helpsGerrish

[Guest]

Hi Gerrish!Thank you very much for your thorough explanation, it was surely VERY enlightning!!! :-)Regards,Jean.