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Adding lights to buildings

T

trucker17

Messages
65
Country
us-california
Hi everyone.
Me and my dad have been working on a scenery project, and have run into a problem.
I am hoping someone here can help us with.

First the buildings we are trying to add night lighting to were made by someone else for our scenery.
The buildings were made in 3Ds Max, and do not include night lighting textures.
What we are trying to do is add lighting to the inside of a hanger. we also have a few buildings with curtains in the windows, these we would like to add some lighting to the edges, and a faint glow through the curtains. and add lighting to the patio cover of one of the buildings.

Please hep explain the process for doing this. And please keep in mind neither of us are very computer literate.
Thank you.
Amanda
 
Hi Amanda,

Assuming you understand textures, own and know how to use a graphic design software, and know that you will have to recompile the buildings I can tell you how I do it. It's simple and quick, kinda.

  • I open the original texture in Photoshop
  • I had a layer, fill it with pure black
  • I change the opacity of that layer to %75-85 depending on how dark I want the object to be
  • Next step depends on the original part of the texture I want to lighten up.
  1. In the case of a window, if the day brightness/color of the glass is good enough such as a light bluish grey then I cut a rectangle in my black layer the shape of the window. Usually this is bright enough to show as a softly lighted window.
  2. In case the glass was represented as some dark shade of grey, instead of cutting a window in the layer I add another layer. On this layer I paste a copy of the glass and modify its brightness. If it's really too dark I just "repaint" it.
  • Next I Save the texture As a bmp.
  • For inside a hangar, I kind of use the same technique as #1, that is I keep the day brightness as is. For the floor it's usually no problem since I use a small texture that is tiled. For the wall it all depends on the designer. If some of the inside walls are using the same parts as the outside walls then you are out of luck and sometimes have to recreate a separate texture and apply it to the model.
It is difficult to help you further without knowing what files you have, what your knowledge is, and what kind of software you own and know how to use.
For the least you have to use a graphic software and probably MCX to recompile the files.
With a bit more info from you I might point you in the right direction more precisely.

Patrick
 
Last edited:
yes, you have to edit the textures in any photo editor, the night textures will be the diffuse textures but darkened, you can add lights efects, phtoshop have a set of light effects or brighten some áreas, it's a Little of art. I usually use Modeoconvertex to add these textures to the model, in the material editor, and save the .Mdl after the texture have been added. It was difficult to find something specific to créate those night textures, I mean about the night textures edition,etc, but Sfrenchie have explained a Little about this.
 
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