[gap]

Originally Posted by Seaowl

For shading I have used the „Principled BSDF“ with Cycles Renderer in Blender 2.80.
The Alpha channel of the texture is enabled, but consciously I haven´t added any special specular map.
In the „Principled BSDF“ though, I had to change some values particulary the roughness, to obtain an acceptable result.

But I suppose, it´s far from perfect and I´am thankful for every instruction.
As I said above: I´am at the very beginning of using Blender.
It´s a lot of fun but a ongoing trial and error.

I know very little about rendering programs but how do your work with Cycles Renderer applies with the textures and materials we see in game?

Originally Posted by Seaowl

In my first attempts I set – as you have shown me – the lighthouse as terrain unit:
The problem was, that the lighthouseflare dissappeared like switched off in a distance of about 2700 meters;
the model itself was visible only a little bit longer (about 3500 m).

That's true. As I have discovered with the input of Jeff, the rendering distance of terrain objects is proportional to the radius of their bounding sphere, so if you want to increase it, you need to add a dummy mesh to your model. A big triangular face under the soil level (so that it can't be seen) will do the trick. How big, is a matter of trial and error

Originally Posted by Seaowl

Later – likewise following your suggestion – I set the lighthouse as land unit.
Since then visibility is no issue any longer.
There is no noticeable popping up of the model itself.
The flare is visible from about 16-17 km.
Of course: the flare of real lighthouses reaches a lot farther.
Though thats a problem to address later.

IIRC, units' rendering radius in stock game is 20 km. Beyond that limit, all the units are treated as immaterial points. One of TDW's patches can increase this limit. During your tests the lighthouse flare might have disappeared because you had trespassed that limit, or because the size of the effect had become too small compared to your creen resolution.

Originally Posted by Seaowl

As shell-unit figures the LCD_Bunker_Large file.

That's the bunker I have imported in game for TWoS. In general I wouldn't recommend you to use modded files for your own mods. Due to the unfinished state of GR2Editor, the modding of GR2 Editor might corrupt GR2 files in a way that it won't be obvious until you you try performing certaing operations on them

Originally Posted by Seaowl

So far I haven´t neither added any LOD-model, nor changed
the Reflect and DMG_col mesh of the original unit.
I will deal with them in the next turn.

You could attach the water reflection controller directly to the main model and replace the current reflect model with a simple dummy mesh with no controller atached to it, or you could create a low poly version of the main model (e.g. using Blender's decimate modifier) and use it as reflect and LOD model.

Originally Posted by Seaowl

I have used the original SH3-dat.
Never managed to append AO-maps and Bumpmaps to converted SH3 units in SH4.
But – as far as I remember – in KSD-2 (really great mod by the way) there is a simplified model of Flakmonkeys lighthouse with additional Ao-map.
Could try to import it and – if there is any significant difference – post some comparision screens.

Do you have SHIV? If not, just check one of the DAT ships included in TWoS to understand how the unified render controller works. It should be okay using it on units as well as on terrain objects.

Originally Posted by Seaowl

You are right, there is a problem.
Will try to solve it with edge-splitting.

Okay

Originally Posted by Seaowl

Thanks again to taking the time to answer
and providing all the tips and hints.

My pleasure

Let me know if in future you decide to experiment with the HarborCtrl controller (the one used in SH5 for adding night lights and winter snow to terrain objects). I tried adding it to my sea stack model but it didn't work probably because I imported it in the GR2 file of one of the stock sea units, (not a terrain object). I am not 100% sure about that, but here might be something in the materials of terrain objects that makes the said controller to work.