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Two questions

jyarddog

jyarddog

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us-washington
1. Lights- I followed a light tutorial but found this was for using FSDS V.2. At least it got me started. I made a lamp to shine on the ground. Z is pointing down from the "bulb". I made a circle on the ground with emissive which showed up nicely. I went back to FSDS V.3 and added light shining from the bulb to the circle, using 'cone' and dragging the apex to touch the bulb and setting the alpha channel to about 20 or 25. I tried to compile all this and got the message- bglc_9 failed to create the intermediate mdl. I took out the cone and all was well. To experiment, I put back the cone and took out the circle on the ground. All compiled well. so- FSDS likes the light casting from the bulb to ground or the circle on the ground but not both. I really don't need the 'cone' (light slightly visible from bulb to ground) but it was a nice touch. The main concern is the circle patch on the ground. The tutorial said to make the patch just below ground level. Of course this didn't work. Raised it to slightly above ground level and it became visible. biggest problem is how does one make it so the circle is not a nice clean-lined circle but diffused and fuzzy around the edges more like rwy12's ramplihgt library? Also, with polygons is the visible side up or down? We can use shift and mouse to rotate just the x,y,z axis without disturbing the polygon. Is this ok to do? Bulb z pointing down. Is the ground polygon supposed to point its z up toward the bulb or down also?

2. FSDS says polygons espeically triangles and I think disks have one visible side. It talks about 'mirror' to make it so a polygon will be seen on both sides. Where is this 'mirror' button if it exists at all? I thought I saw it one day. I must be dreaming. I do know I can copy and flip back to back and join to I have two sides. Maybe this is what is meant by mirror?

Sorry for the plethora of questions. bob
 
Hi Bob, Join the club of the uncertain! FSDSv3 is a good program but you must play with it to find it all out, like the rest of us! For your info - the 'y' axis must point up - so that must be the face of the disk. You have found out one of the limitations of compiling - don't try to put more than one condition. You can have 2 objects - say a LIGHT_LAND and a LIGHT_TAXI if they both light up at night. To light up at Dawn/Dusk you must duplicate the objects. But this is quite easy to do especially if you are using EZ-Scenery to place the objects. Don't forget to make all the bits in FSDS have the same orientation e.g. they point towards you or away from you. I personally like the 'cone' of light. You must have seen my thread on this subject anyway. I haven't seen a 'mirror' button yet but that doesn't mean there isn't one! I joined the 2 parts to have both the cone and the beam show at the same time. Basically it is all trial and error with most things, and practice of course.
 
2 questions

Warmingham- Thank you for your generous help. So both won't work even though after the third time I used no conditions on the cone. I think I still had the cone named light_land. Perhaps it was expecting a condition and wasn't getting one. Anyway- being a newbie to FSDS V3 it's fun playing around with stuff. I've made some nice stuff so far and some pretty awful stuff!. :) John B. Loney has helped me quite a bit with FSDS. I fouind out that too much usage of 'clone' of many parts and large parts like log for a log house caused my machine to lock up even though I have quite a bit of memory. I use it sparingly now and just use copy and paste. Now, if I could figure out how to fuzz up the edges of the circle on the ground, that would be a nice step forward. Bob
 
Bob, just a quick note in case you weren't aware. All the names for parts in FSDS that you want to use a condition on MUST be in CAPITAL letters i.e. LIGHT_LAND, BRIGHT_ etc. Have a look at the MakeMDL folder Word document for all the correct names.
 
Hi Warmingham.....nice to see you around. Are there "doves" (pigions) in Malta?...have your wife make you some "dove soup" for two or three days....you´ll feel like Hercules!!!!!.............
..........
Ok....I am working on an airport in the boondocks!!!:rolleyes: way out there....and the darn place needs two bitup light poles...just one bulb in them...I made the pole and there is no way I can turn the light on....any tips???:confused:

Got the towers going and made a Oil Rig using two of them, thanks.
 
Solid (Gera) - Let me take a stab at this. Warmington can correct anything I say wrong. This is like teaching. Teaching is a good way to learn and solidify one's learning. Warm's post above is very important.

What I did with my recent lamps is... I made the pole with mice curves on top, etc the the lamp covers and joined everything. From this point on don't dare join any 'bulbs' you add!!! Add your two bulbs with materials as gray. choice, - conditions day OR... just leave it as is with no condition. Now- copy and paste one of the bulbs. go to parts properties, choose white AND also choose white for emissive setting. Does that bulb show up glowing white? No? size that bulb ever so slightly bigger than the day bulb until it glows with no gray showing through. Now- parts properties again, hit browse. See where it says aircraft stock animation? Click the arrow, choose lights. From here it's your choice. I did this- choose lights_taxi. Hit ok. Now - in the parts name on top where it says lights_taxi retype that but in capital letters. You can add anything after that in lower case if you want. I'd suggest not having any spaces so use - or _ where you need to.

Now for condition- choose dawn/dusk, hit ok. I would make sure 'set materials' is still checked, hilite dusk/dawn, hit ok. That's just to make sure all is chosen as you wish. Maybe i'm nit-pciking here, but it's working for me.

All done? Good. Now copy that bulb you just got done with and paste it, and place it on the other side (this is assuming you are making a two bulb lamp).

Repeat this process (copy and paste one of the new bulbs) but this time choose night in conditions. Do this for the other side as well. When choosing conditions make sure you uncheck anything related to aircraft.

what this does is- day non glowing bulbs. Dusk or dawn, glowing white bulbs. Night- the same. If this isn't followed... say... you didn't do danw/dusk. You will have a nice lamp in the day time, dusk... the bulbs will disappear on you, then at night the bulbs show up again! How do I know? Been there done that! Warmington might have an easier way. Until he posts try this. Check back to see what he says. He might tell me to go stand in the corner with a dunce cap on. Bwahahaha! Bob
 
There you Mr Solid, how to make lamps in easy stages. The main purpose of this forum is to ask questions and share ideas. When you are successful at making something and then when someone asks "How can I .......?" You tell them! I too learned something from this thread. We are always learning aren't we? Well done Bob - now we have to concentrate on the fuzzy beams? Let us know when you have any success in that area.
 
Here's a few lamps I made. The rusty lamp pole is a bit thin but it's ok. The others, day.jpg and dusk.jpg by the night club I made are there just to show day time and dusk. Night view is the same but hard to see the poles. I made a bulb for each condition... day, dusk, night. I noticed I had to make the day bulb a bit bigger so it would override the other bulbs. Maybe I didn't have to do that, but just reaffirm that my other settings were right. I had a light casting shaddow on one of the lamps, but when I added the extra bulbs bglc_9 had a fit over that and wouldn't compile. I just took the light shaddows out. The light casting you see close by is from someone else's lamp, not mine. That is what I would like to figure out! :) Bob
 
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Hi Warmingham and jyardog.....
Thanks, I will try making my lamps following your tutorial..........maybe tomorrow I will post the Oil Rig with the towers.....
Yes, gentlemen like you have taught me more in this forum than any manual or help file is FSDS!!!!!....really great. I appreciate the time people take to help others here....just fine.....
:)
 
Gera- Dats what we all be here for! Now- post your oil rig and towers and tell me how you did them. One fellow, John Stinstrom I think, did a Whidbey Island scenery. This was his first. I think he did a wonderful job. he made an airport tower in FSDS and told me basically how he did it. It turned out wonderful. Now- if I can learn that fast I'd be dangerous! :) Gotta go teach school in a bit. Back later. Bob
 
Hi Bob, This is the closest I have gotten to fuzzy beams. And I uploaded one of my street-lamps as I like to call them. They come on at all times as well. The beam looks OK like that but when I try to put it on a flat disc, it disappears almost, I have probably got too much alpha in it. Why don't you download it and see what you can do?
 
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Warmington- tis an honor you'd let me hack this up! hehehe. I'll try. I wrote to Woody about animated doors to clarify something in his tutorial and also mentioned the light on the gorund. He said something about using Paint Shop or other to paint a glow on the ground and go from there which i wasn't sure of his procedure. He said to play around with that. All I have is Adobe and Adobe doesn't see bmps. I can convert with another program but I might lose some quality. Wish I could get ahold of the guy who did ramplights. For his info I'd tell him my secret steelhead hole location, but then he probably doesn't fish! hahaha. There's someone else in England who made nice lights but he does payware. The pic you posted doesn't look bad at all. You can tell my first light with jerky bends in it. The dual lamp turned out ok. The brown one was just a simple lamp while experimenting with bulb assignments. Thr rusty lamp - pole too thin, but having fun anyway. I'll load your zip and study what you did with it. Bob

My mistake- The zip was a jpg. I thought it was an FSDS file to fiddle with. disks have one side. Maybe the bmp was put on the wrong side? In an earlier light tutorial it said to place the disk just barely below ground level. When I did that nothing showed up until I brought just barely above ground level.
 
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Warmie- (:))I'll give it a go. It's great to be given the honor to be able to screw something up all by oneself! bwahahaha!

I've been horsing around with emissive, speculative, etc just to see what these do. I can't get emissive or speculative to change numbers. Is this omething to do with preferences or am I just holding my tongue wrong? Bob
 
Warmingham- Very nice buildings. How did you get the edges with the slanted parts to the upper parts? Was this done like in the smooth groups tutorial? Are those gutters on the sides?

Large box for ground light glow? It would be interesting to see how that works. Cone within a cone; wonder what effect this has. Bob
 
Hi Bob, Ha! Ha! - didn't realise that I'd sent you those buildings! That's another project I am helping a colleague with. Slanted roofs - Point Mode. But you need to be careful when selecting the points to drag. I normally turn my objects (all of them together) around to an angle of 45° to get a better view. I worked with all 3 views at once to be sure I am only going to pick the correct points. Yes, they are gutters and drain pipes - very thin long boxes. I always measure first to get the correct length. As for the lights you can see that I try anything to get the desired effect! When you say you can't change the numbers, I cannot see why not. Create a box - Press F2 - Choose Add or Edit from the left. Click Material. Then you can change the Red, Green or Blue values - must be between 0 and 255. but it is much easier to click on the Select box at the side because then you can actually see the colour. Don't forget to add to Custom Colours. Alpha - only affects the Diffuse Colour and the Specular Box at the bottom only works on the Specular colour as well. I don't know what the maximum value is, but I have used anything upto 1000. 500 is OK. It's all trial and error isn't it.
 
I think I see what I was doing. In 'emissive' I was trying to change the alpha channel. I'll try the other boxes and see what I can do with those.

The building files you sent... by honor I will not use those for any of my libraries but as an example to look at and compare while I'm trying to do similar buildings... for my learning. I did make a fairly nice log cabin and made a table and chairs for inside. Patted myself on the back until I saw some other log cabins... sheesh! Glad I didn't break my arm while patting myself on the back! Hahaha! Bob (yep- trial and error). The old joke goes... Mr.... How did you become so succssful? ..... By making right decisions. Well, How did you learn to make right decisions? .... By making wrong decisions! :)
 
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