Creating custom lights A-Z

[Bastoc]

Hello,

 

I want to create a custom light for a Chritsmas atmosphere: glass spheres with different colored lights inside.

 

My first problem is that I don't fully understand what a light is composed of, so if anyone can confirm or correct the following it would help:

 

Two categories (from mapper's POV): covered and uncovered

 

Covered lights are "standalone". They have:

 

- a model: .lwo or .ase files, what contains the light source

- skins: .skin applies to the model to use different texture sets when lit or unlit

 

Uncovered lights are attached to a separate solid model (eg a candle. NB: the model can have lit/unlit skins)

 

- particle: .prt what looks to be emitting the light (eg flame/glare)

 

Common spawnargs for both:

 

- _color, light_radius, light_center (position of vertex?), etc.

- noshadows, noshadows_lit, nospecular, nodiffuse

- light texture: as I understand it, it's like a 1D mask with fading that makes things look more or less bright according to distance (applied to 3 directions -> 3D). Since it's a texture: other topic.

- snd_shader: it can make a noise like electrical lights do (so it's also a "speaker", sort of)

- visual flicker: I didn't find how to fiddle with that (I don't really need to anyway)

-...

 

So if I got it well, the main problem is that although you can change light color easily in DR, it doesn't change the particule's color or the model's skin, and you have to do it manually with external tools (maybe that's why some skins have a _colorme suffix).

 

So question is, for what I want to do, do I really need to install Doom3Ed to create new .prt as described here: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Particle_Editor ?

Seems really cumbersome for a simple colored glare. Maybe I should ask Bikerdude or ShadowHide if I can use their fireflies particles.

 

There's also the glass sphere that has a low maximum number of faces (maybe 20) so it looks awful, and you can't soften edges in DR, I believe. Any idea?

[Bikerdude]

I want to create a custom light for a Chritsmas atmosphere: glass spheres with different colored lights inside.

Check out the latest version (3) of "Business as Usual" as I created some xmas tree lights!

 

Or if you like I will make a small TUT of how I did it..?

[Bastoc]

Check out the latest version (3) of "Business as Usual" as I created some xmas tree lights!

 

Or if you like I will make a small TUT of how I did it..?

 

Oh! This was the second FM I played after St Lucia. Fun one. Good gameplay and as the title suggests, nice doing average taffing. I just checked again and indeed that hotel room sure is cosy .

 

Thank you. I'm having a look at what you did.

 

/*

Generated by DarkRadiant's Particle Editor.

*/

particle tdm_glare_xmaslight {

{

count 10

material textures/darkmod/sfx/fake_haze_01

time 0.200

cycles 0.000

timeOffset 0.000

bunching 1.000

distribution sphere 0.000 0.000 0.000

direction cone 0.000

orientation view

speed "0.000"

size "0.010" to "5.000"

aspect "1.000"

rotation "0.000"

randomDistribution 1

boundsExpansion 0.000

fadeIn 0.000

fadeOut 1.000

fadeIndex 0.000

color 0.200 0.120 0.000 1.000

fadeColor 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

offset 0.000 0.000 0.000

gravity 0.000

entityColor 1

}

}

 

With that, I should be able to figure it out. If not I'll ask you

 

So far thanks to that I've discovered the built-in particle editor (good start!) and the magical entityColor flag that matches the particle color with the light I think.

 

EDIT:

 

I think you copied the tdm_glare_lamp_01 particle, removed the stage1 smoke particles, changed the radius of the stage0 fake_haze_01 and some other stuff. Some parameters are a bit cryptic, but the editor is a nice feature. I should be fine. Thanks a lot!

Edited December 16, 2013 by Bastoc