Guild of Writers

Chacal wrote:So, referring to the picture I posted above, if I wanted to reproduce this scene exactly in the City, I would just have to place my objects in the great stairs prp, texture them using the same textures as Cyan did, place a few blue and red lights (in addition to the existing lights in the prp), and bake to vertex color?

I never added items to existing Ages, so I'm not sure what you mean with "place my objects in the great stairs prp, [..], and bake to vertex color". How can you bake objects in a PRP? I can only tell how to do this in Blender.
Are you importing the complete Aegura Age (or at least the stairs) into Blender, add some objects, and bake them there?
Or are you trying to bake the objects just alone, without stairs, floor and other surroundings, and add those objects by editing PRPs from an only-those-objects Blender export?

Sorry, I wasn't very clear.
I want to add objects in Aegura, like Chloe (I think) did for the lake meter on the docks.
These objects will be exported into a separate prp.

Of course I would like these objects to have the same lighting as their surroundings.
For example, it is quite dark in the City. I don't want my objects to have bright textures.

So I'm guessing that I have to bake them with the same lights as their surroundings?
I was thinking of importing the City (for example, the prp for the Great Stairs), with its existing lamps, place my objects in it (which I have to do anyway for correct positioning), texture them with City textures, bake the vertex color, then export the objects.

Thank you for your clarification.

Chacal wrote:So I'm guessing that I have to bake them with the same lights as their surroundings?

Well... in theory, yes. But a) I'm not sure if Cyan really did bake the light, or if there's some manual correction added by the designer, and b) it's not guaranteed that Blender will use the exact same light baking intensity a 3DSMax does. The latter could be true, but I don't know.
I assume you would have to just try it out, and do (hopefully few, but in worst case lots of) experiments to get a pleasing and matching lighting - as nearly all Age Builders are used to do.
As denDwaler writes in his signature: "Those wonderful worlds are called Ages - because that's what it takes to build one."

But at least the light color plus it's direction should come out matching in the first try with your method.

Hey, so I decided to try this in Tsoidahl Prad, and even after "converting" the file by saving it in 2.62, it causes Blender to crash when loaded in 2.49... Any idea what that all about?

No idea. Maybe you've got some "unusual" data in your file.
You could try to import (using "append or link", then append) only the objects of interest, one by one, into your original 2.49 design file from the 2.62 save instead of loading the whole thing.

Ok, well that did it. Not sure why it wasn't working before.