Transport Tycoon Forums

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Hello there

I have modified dmh_mac's standard light setup so that materials in the final render match the way they look in the preview window. The only modification was to reduce the strength of every light source by half (5 lights & ambient occlusion energy).

Both these buildings are rendered with the new setup (both WIP):


it is especially important to get a definite light setup if we start to build a material library. Dmh_mac already told me he would be in favour of switching. What do others think?

Here is the setup. make sure to download the reflection map if you use reflection and change the path of the reflection map in blender; for flat reflective surfaces we might need aditional, planar reflection maps:

When you use a reflection map all the windows on a side of a building get the same uniform colour. With my method you get an actual reflection. (dmh_mac)

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They look a bit dark, too be honest. Like they were rendered during a cloudy day.

I agree, too Dark. Nice models though...that water effect at the base of the tower is quality

hmm do you think its because of contrast or because of overall brightness?

I did the same thing and tried it on a couple of my models a while ago, and they looked too dark as well. Perhaps if you change the power of the lights with 25% instead of 50%?

why would you want the renders to look like the material selection preview if that results in a sprite that is not what you want the game to look like?

sounds to me like it's that materials preview window that needs editing, not the lighting setup.

overall brightness i think, cause look at the trees in the park, there almost 1 colour

My biggest problem with the current light setup is that it makes it hardly impossible to use white. If I want a white roof, for example, I have to make it a very dark grey, sometimes boardering to black (see attachment below). So even if you make a texture you are pleased with, you can be sure it wont look that way once you render it. So I think it would be better to change the light setup so it's not as bright, instead of having to redo the textures over and over until it works with the ligth setup.

you're right about the trees, but thats the texture i think, I'll have to have a look at it ... look at the concrete frame of the big building though: its supposed to be bright grey, and its quite bright on top

Nice station! Odd flag, aint seen that before.
This topic seems remarkably allike to another one ive seen around here...arrr

I have uninstalled blender at the moment, so the station is all I have to show what I mean.

The shadows make me wonder, what will happen to the part of the shadow which falls outside the tile?

purno: Yeah, ive wondered that a lot If an obeject goes out beyond its area that would be ok, but a shoddow isnt solid... are sprites with an opacity posible?

I agree that the original pictures look a bit like a rainy day. In this render I made just the sun just a bit brighter (0.75, was 1 originally and 0.5 in my mod) and the bright concrete frame (which is an almost white colour but reflection value 0.9) gets (255,255,255) in the render ..... so maybe the problem with my picture is not with the light but with the model ... maybe it's just that there are no reflections in the windows, so they make it look really dark, plus the concrete on the roof is in itself a rather dark texture.

That is definatly clearer than before, and more of a contrast of colours. Really nice building/model by the way.

I was/am still wondering. The shaddow goes over onto the next tile. Would the method of filling the shaddow casting area with checkered pixels work. Every other pixel being see threw. The most common object for it to fall onto would be the road. Other buildings would block it out... So if the shaddow was drawn to fit the shape of the curbstone/road (almost flat), then that might work?

<edit> ...hmm that makes little sence..2nd picture is what i mean.

shadow: it should be possible to render a plane that receives shadow to the left of the building, so you don't need checker overlay but could draw it smooth. the problem is, however, that this will render the shadow on an even plane, so it will look bad if in the game the ground isn't even, so i wonder how that should be solved short of somehow rendering the shadow 3d for the right terrain.......

I rendered a ball with colour max white and ref=1 and no highlight in the modified setup. the whole area marked by red is (255,255,255). I really think the setup is bright enough. the problem with my building is probably the texture, so I have tried brightening the image:

Ok, I've been messing around with blender for a bit and I think setting the range (shading buttons >> world buttons >> world >> range) to circa 1.6 and changing ambient occlusion from "both" to "add" will give satisfactory results.
(I used the official light setup as a base for this, NOT the altered one from this thread.)



On a side note there is an excelent library plugin for blender available here.

dmh_mac, I checked your settings and I think they're much better. If you look at the original render, the roof is completely white, with dmh_mac's settings it is a lot better:

the problem with changing range is that it will also affect reflections etc. and not just adjust the lighting. we had this back in this thread.