Page 1 of 1

dark (I mean DARK) interiors, howto? help needed

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 6:41 pm
by peterdin
any idea how to make the interiors completely dark?

I'm doing some sewers for wynna and I sitll have to much light, also when switching directional light off.

NWN1 had the possibility to change colour and also fog distance could be set which pretty much limited the view of a PC. Didn't find it yet in the NWN2 toolset.

I've found some tilelightning scripts in the toolset but I really dont know what they do.
Any suggestions?

Re: dark (I mean DARK) interiors, howto? help needed

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 8:48 pm
by Teric neDhalir
Image

Peterdin,
Look in the area properties tab and you should find all the above settings for each time under Appearance>Day/Night Cycle Stages. If you're having a constant lighting edit the values under "Default" and turn Day/Night cycle to "False".

Each area actually has three lights on it at all times:
SunMoon, which is the brightness of the sun or moon object, which moves over time between the coordinates specified in SunMoonDirection.
SkyLight, which is a constant ambient light that lights all upwards pointing faces, and
GroundLight, which is a constant on all downward pointing faces.

If you turn off the directional light everything is still lit by SkyLight and GroundLight. So making their intensity lower makes the area darker. I go for 0.1 for both values in unlit areas. This can give interesting effects, however; if you made the ground light red and stronger than the sky light you have the glow from a pool of lava, for example.

As far as the fog goes there are 4 values:
FarClip is the distance in metres at which the engine stops drawing anything (try setting it to 10 - everything will dissappear).
FogColour is the RGB value of the fog colour (no sh1t!)
FogEnd is the distance at which the engine stops drawing fog, and
FogStart is where it starts.

I like to set the fog start at about 10 and the FogEnd at the same value as the FarClip distance, that way everything kinda fades off into the distance. One word of warning about fog and interiors - although it looks cool from a PC's point-of-view if you zoom out you find that everything on screen that isn't a tile is drawn in that colour, so if you're close to the edge of an area there can be an overpowering amount of slime green on screen.

Re: dark (I mean DARK) interiors, howto? help needed

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 9:48 pm
by peterdin
thanks
I didn't put fog on, but changed intensities and colours of the lights
this lead to this with torch
Image
amd this with light cast
Image
when there's no light it's pretty dark.

ps: wynna: your sewers will be pretty cool

Re: dark (I mean DARK) interiors, howto? help needed

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 3:03 am
by darrenhfx
Holy monster beacon!

Nice work.

Re: dark (I mean DARK) interiors, howto? help needed

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 3:12 am
by Wynna
All I want for Christmas, indeed. Thanks, Peterdin.

Re: dark (I mean DARK) interiors, howto? help needed

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 10:18 pm
by peterdin
sneak preview of Wynna's cristmas present.
(its a bit bumpy and area loading takes time as video capture was eating my cpu time)


Re: dark (I mean DARK) interiors, howto? help needed

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 11:44 pm
by Wynna
Ah, Peterdin...and I didn't get you anything. *sniff* Such a nice prezzie. There will, of course, be a test for all future sewer denizens. You must watch the video and find your way out otherwise blindfolded, with a giant diseased rat nibbling at your heels for encouragement.

The video capture itself is cool, Peterdin. What program is that?

Re: dark (I mean DARK) interiors, howto? help needed

Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2008 2:43 am
by Curmudgeon
Excellent use of sound & music!!!

Re: dark (I mean DARK) interiors, howto? help needed

Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2008 6:37 am
by peterdin
Wynna wrote: The video capture itself is cool, Peterdin. What program is that?
Its called debut video capture

its free and great! and one importyant thing: it works!
donwload it from http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html