Please illuminate me!

[Guest Robs]

Hi All,I am a learner at this model building. Confident at the basics - wot about the fiddly bits- lights and cables and railings.The thorney subject of lighting is approaching - is there a tutorial on how to add lights - windows at night security lights and street lights?(same goes with transparancies for railings and fences etc)At the moment the UK is dark - is it best to put street lights down the motorways and roads?What about the nitemaps dir - can this be done with the tiles? Can you add small randon lights on the tiles to show the big cities etc I don't know what I am asking yet....Strike a light, I need illumination on the subject of illumination.I have Rob D's new fixmip but not fired it up yet - wanna finish my latest building before I make changes.Would like to read before I do here!Rob.

[Guest juvat2]

Hi Rob,I think this sight will get you going.http://www.ratol.fi/~tlehto/fu2/fu2stuff.htmlTake care,Jim B.

[Guest R_Driscoll]

Jim's pointed you in the right direction! Tomi Lehto was solving these problems way back in the old FU2 days. His tutorial on adding lights is still relevant and still works. Read it, follow his examples and call me if there are any problems - I could give you more examples. But I have been lazy with the last few models, and haven't added much of Tom's style of lighting. I need to go back and do this some time.Window-type lighting (such as used extensively at Heathrow) is different. Here are the steps:1) You makle the daytime MIP file from a GIF picture. Keep this GIF.2) Edit the GIF so that it looks like what you want at night: - darken the whole picture by about 70% - locate the windows and highlight them in bright colours, not all square or it looks false - brighten any other areas getting lit by lights (see my plane parking bays for examples Its best to do this in black and white only, since FU3 only night lights in monochrome!3) Save CAREFULLY, so that you don't overwrite your daytime GIF. Eg. for tree1, I call my daytime GIF "t_tree1.gif", and my nightime GIF gets called "n_tree1.gif".This temporary name is to protect the day GIF and MIP from accidents! It will be renamed (below) after installing.4) Fire up the NEW version of FixMip. Now: - select the SEATTLE palette (Yes, Seattle, NOT SanFran) - choose GIF to MIP conversion - load the night GIF file (eg "n_tree1.gif") - select night lighting from the options page - (note: transparency does not work as far as I know for night models! Why? I have no idea.) - Make the file. You now have a new file "n_tree1.MIP".5) Copy the model file ("Tree10.bin") and the night MIP file ("n_tree1.MIP") into the folder: regionsUK_SouthGENLitemapsNow go to this folder (using Windows Explorer for example) and rename the MIP file to "t_tree1.MIP": rename n_tree1.MIP to t_tree1.MIP(The night MIP must have exactly the same name as the day MIP). Congratulations! You should now see the model in night palette in FU3.Rob, on the topic of transparency, read the notes in FixMip and if you have any problems, drop me an email.Good luck with the models!RobD.