Newbie question regarding first basical age

[N. Sigismund]

You can also use Vertex painting to paint on the shadows and whatnot. :p

I started with a similar idea, by the way. Small ages are hard to work with sometimes, though.

[Rabenschwinge]

Sounds like you've gotten quite far. Just try adjusting the intensity and distance of your lamp. I'd set the distance at something like 200 to start with.

Okay, I`ll try that, thanks

Keep in mind that there are a few different ways of lighting your age. You can go with (what I like to call General) lighting, which is to use a single Sun lamp. Like Lontahv said, you can increase the power of the raise it's power. This will give the lamp itself a greater lighting distance.

If I understand this correctly, a sun lamp is suitable for "outdoor ages", right? What about "indoor" ages, like the one I´m trying out at the moment? Would a sun lamp work with that?

To fine-tune lighting on specific objects, you can also adjust the material properties.

To do this, you can play around with the colors of the materials, as well as their Specularity and Gloss. (There are other options, but these are the ones I use most frequently.)

You can also adjust the amount of ambient light the material receives. This is done by selecting the object, hit F5 (or click the Shading button), then the Material button. Click on the Shaders tab, then look down to the Amb slider. It is normally set to 1.000. You can adjust this from 0 to 1.000. The higher the number (the further to the right), the more ambient light the material will recieve, and vice versa. I've found this helpful in reducing the "shininess (sp)" of floors walls etc.

Sounds very intriguing, I´ll try those after I´ll get the stuff with the right power and distance of the lamp

You can also use lightmaps. Andylegate has a very usefull tutorial at the GoMa. http://www.guildofmaintainers.org/gomaw ... gLightMaps

Dunno if this was helpful.

I read the tutorial - sounds rather complicated, I hope I will understand that in time, but for now, I think I will stick to the "easier" methods

And, yes, your advice was helpful, thank you !

You can also use Vertex painting to paint on the shadows and whatnot. :p

I started with a similar idea, by the way. Small ages are hard to work with sometimes, though.

I am not sure if I understand what Vertex painting exactly is - I will study this, and try to use it.

Sigh... I really hoped to make things easier by doing a small indoor age, but seems like I started at the wrong end *laugh*
Thanks!

[ZURI]

No, no, you're doing just fine. My first age was a large "outdoor" age, and found it to be much harder than a smaller "indoor" setup.

Yes, you can use a Sun Lamp for indoor uses. The only major problem that you will run into is the shadows from avatars will face away from wherever the Sun is. The "Walls" that you create will not stop the "sun" from shining through. For the most part, this is not a major ordeal. I use them on my "Tunnel" age that is in progress and it is not that noticable. In the end, I may rework things and replace them with spots - but for now they serve their purposes.

As far as lightmaps are concerned... they're really not that hard to use. However, it is best to create them last,.... after the age is complete.

Vertex painting allows your to blend two objects together. For example, if you have a column, and would like to make the bottom grungy, and the rest a shiny marble (without creating a complex texture) - you can use Vertex Painting to do so. There is a great tutorial on this in the Wiki. It is really, really easy to do (not over-exagerating), but can become very difficult quickly if used on a complex mesh. There are also issues with the transparency allowing you to see "through" the mesh to other parts of the age. I have found a workaround for this, by creating a low-poly mesh of the object - making it a bit smaller and removing the textures and giving it a black material with 0 gloss, 0 specularity, and 0 ambient. The Low-poly object should be "inside" the Vertex Painted objects and merely block the line-of-site.

Sorry, I don't want to confuse you.... However, it's a great tool. Just don't overuse it. It can eat framerates on slower machines.


Edit... For clarity. You don't use Vertex Paint for shadows. You use it to create transparency that will blend 2 or more objects together. You Can however, use Texture Painting to add custom shadows. Do keep in mind that you'll need to make the texture "single use" or it will add shadows on ALL objects sharing the single texture. The Shadows themselves will show up on the texture, and depending on how you use the UV-Map, it can have beneficial results or quite the opposite.

[Rabenschwinge]

No, no, you're doing just fine. My first age was a large "outdoor" age, and found it to be much harder than a smaller "indoor" setup.

Yes, you can use a Sun Lamp for indoor uses. The only major problem that you will run into is the shadows from avatars will face away from wherever the Sun is. The "Walls" that you create will not stop the "sun" from shining through. For the most part, this is not a major ordeal. I use them on my "Tunnel" age that is in progress and it is not that noticable. In the end, I may rework things and replace them with spots - but for now they serve their purposes.

As far as lightmaps are concerned... they're really not that hard to use. However, it is best to create them last,.... after the age is complete.

Vertex painting allows your to blend two objects together. For example, if you have a column, and would like to make the bottom grungy, and the rest a shiny marble (without creating a complex texture) - you can use Vertex Painting to do so. There is a great tutorial on this in the Wiki. It is really, really easy to do (not over-exagerating), but can become very difficult quickly if used on a complex mesh. There are also issues with the transparency allowing you to see "through" the mesh to other parts of the age. I have found a workaround for this, by creating a low-poly mesh of the object - making it a bit smaller and removing the textures and giving it a black material with 0 gloss, 0 specularity, and 0 ambient. The Low-poly object should be "inside" the Vertex Painted objects and merely block the line-of-site.

Sorry, I don't want to confuse you.... However, it's a great tool. Just don't overuse it. It can eat framerates on slower machines.


Edit... For clarity. You don't use Vertex Paint for shadows. You use it to create transparency that will blend 2 or more objects together. You Can however, use Texture Painting to add custom shadows. Do keep in mind that you'll need to make the texture "single use" or it will add shadows on ALL objects sharing the single texture. The Shadows themselves will show up on the texture, and depending on how you use the UV-Map, it can have beneficial results or quite the opposite.

Great, a lot of valuable information for me!

I managed to set up a quite realistic spot, it works great for the small room I have yet.

I have some ideas for light maps - I hope, I can properly use them, when the age is done.

Vertex painting sounds interesting, can´t imagine a situation yet, where I would need it - if it really eats framerates, I´ll stay away from it, at least for now.


In the meantime, I´ve done a lot on my age: I´m satisfied with lighting for now, and have started to texture the room - more or less successfully.

Ive also added a "real" lamp, read: an UV-sphere, which I colored so that it looks like a glowing lamp (so the weird feeling of light coming out of nowhere vanished )


Two problems occurred, however (well, no surprise here ^^ ): One thing I have solved myself, I unintentionally copied an object into itself, so that a weird texture noise-blur-thingy appeared. When you stand in the age and move, while watching this objects, the texture "moves" and blurs, and there are strange distortions moving around on the surface.

I solved this problem by simply erasing the second copy of the object, and surely will avoid this mistake in the future


The second problem, which I wasnt able to solve yet, eludes me.

Ive set up materials and textures for all my planes, floor, walls, and ceiling. The walls all use the same material and texture. 3 of the walls are looking fine. The 4th wall though has the same texture like the other 3, but it is turned 90 degrees, so that it doesnt fit.

I dont understand why, because the same material and texture work fine with the other three walls...

The walls are seperate objects, not grouped, not put together as an object or anything like that.

(edited because of spelling errors)

[Lontahv]

Vertex painting sounds interesting, can´t imagine a situation yet, where I would need it - if it really eats framerates, I´ll stay away from it, at least for now.

I just wanted to clarify that Zuri wasn't referring to vertex paint eating frame-rates but a method called baking or texture painting (comes out to about the same thing). Vertex paint is something that is on all your meshes; however, it is not visible because it is all set to white. It is a great way to simulate light, however, the resolution of the mesh is the resolution of the vertex paint. If you want to add more detail to your lighting, do not subdivide your mesh. Use a separate image with the lighting/shadows stored in it (think overlay).

[Rabenschwinge]

Vertex painting sounds interesting, can´t imagine a situation yet, where I would need it - if it really eats framerates, I´ll stay away from it, at least for now.

I just wanted to clarify that Zuri wasn't referring to vertex paint eating frame-rates but a method called baking or texture painting (comes out to about the same thing). Vertex paint is something that is on all your meshes; however, it is not visible because it is all set to white. It is a great way to simulate light, however, the resolution of the mesh is the resolution of the vertex paint. If you want to add more detail to your lighting, do not subdivide your mesh. Use a separate image with the lighting/shadows stored in it (think overlay).

Okay, thanks, I think (hope) I understand the difference now

At the moment, I´m keeping the lighting simple for my basic age, but I will try out the more challenging ways of lighting/shadowing when I´m a little better regarding my skills.

By the way, ZURI, I´ve stumbled over a solution to our problem with sunlight entering even closed rooms: soft volumes!

I don´t understand them fully, but as far as I have learned, they can be used to "block" the light of a sun lamp (or any other lamp) from a certain region.


By the way, in another small test age I´ve been able to do my very first (terrible distorted, but I know, why) waveset, yay!


Has anyone a hint for me, what could cause my wall texture on the 4th wall to be turned by 90 degrees? (the other three wall textures are just doing fine - the four walls share the same material and texture.)

[Lontahv]

Has anyone a hint for me, what could cause my wall texture on the 4th wall to be turned by 90 degrees? (the other three wall textures are just doing fine - the four walls share the same material and texture.)

Rotate the unwrapped mesh in the UV Editor.

[D'Lanor]

Edit... For clarity. You don't use Vertex Paint for shadows.

Maybe you don't but I know many people do and achieve great effect with it.

[ZURI]

Sorry about the misinformation Rabenschwinge. I know about soft-volumes, but didn't want to confuse you more than I probably already had.

D'Lanor, I honestly hadn't heard that we could use Vertex Paint for shadows. While it does make sense, I have been using custom-tailored textures and Texture Paint to work-in my shadows. I even shy away from Lightmaps, since I can do most of that stuff in Gimp. Hehe, I learn new things all the time! There are so many ways to do things that I guess I put my blinders on once I find something that works for me. Perhaps in my next age(s) I'll see about giving some of these other techniques a try.

Thanks guys! I really need a reality check from time to time.

Edited for Grammar

[Rabenschwinge]

Has anyone a hint for me, what could cause my wall texture on the 4th wall to be turned by 90 degrees? (the other three wall textures are just doing fine - the four walls share the same material and texture.)

Rotate the unwrapped mesh in the UV Editor.

Thanks, Ill try that!

Sorry about the misinformation Rabenschwinge. I know about soft-volumes, but didn't want to confuse you more than I probably already had.

No need to apologize, I´m confused all the time anyways


Im still struggling with Blender and its interface, and with basic age building stuff... but I think I´ve made some progress.

My "one room age" has become more - I was able to make a hole looking like a door into one wall. Then I added a corridor (which has messed up textures again - sigh.)


Next things to do: add another, bigger room connected to the corridor, fix the textures, and add a basin of water with wavesets.


By the way, should I post screenshots of my progression? (Haven´t yet sent a FCAL)