[WIP] Damo's Lighting and Ambience Mod.

[Damo]

Hi all,

After posting in the New Interiors thread about my efforts to create a more realistic lighting environment in my game I've been hard at work tweaking and finalizing my lighting setup with the aim to release it to the community. I found the stock lighting and ambient levels too high with overpowering glare levels and thought I'd adjust it. What I aimed to emulate was the quality and technology of electric lighting in the WWII era, as well as making the interior of the boat a lot more gloomy, oppressive and claustrophobic. I think I may have cracked it.

I went through and tweaked every bulb in the sub, making them differ in color, brightness and intensity. Most of the differences are very subtle, but there are now no two bulbs that are the same. I've tried to adjust the lights so they correspond with their surroundings and the lightmaps that are cast by them. One example of this is the engine room, where the bulbs are browner to emulate the collected residue of diesel and oil.

The ambient lighting has been changed to make it darker and tinted to the hue of the old style lights, and I've removed the fog. No longer is the sub lit up like a ferris wheel and the corners of the interior now have better shadow effects where anything could be lurking.....

Anyway, pictures speak a thousand words so here's some screens from my latest version:























This version is made to be compatible with the following mods enabled in the order they are listed:

FM New Interiors v1.0
Open The Conning Tower Hatch TestFMFood

Cameras.dat and Commands_xx.cfg are not altered in any way so all funcionality and features of the above mods is left untouched. The only files altered are:

NSS_Uboat7_CR.dat
NSS_Uboat7_RR.dat
NSS_Uboat7_CT.dat

I'm ready to upload a beta version and the link to that will be sent via PM to the authors of the mods that use these files, as well as a couple of people I've decided to share with for testing and feedback. Please do not request the link as the only people who should have it are those I decide to PM, I will not be persuaded otherwise.

Flakmonkey, Diving Duck and lucagaeta should expect a PM within the next 48 hours, mainly for your testing and approval. I understand that if approval is not granted I will withdraw the mod and further development will cease. I also realise that updates are in the pipeline and a public release may not be possible until they are made public, but at least you can get an idea of what is possible.

If all goes well I'll aim to release versions for the Interiors mod on it's own, OH 3.09, and the standard Open Hatch mod (as provided with GWX), as well as moving on to the other uboats in the game.

I'd like to thank everybody here at Subsim that answer people's questions and also those that ask them in the first place, without this excellent community I'd still be floating around in a cramped uboat wondering what all these dials do, let alone twiddling about in S3D...

Thankyou.

Updates will be posted here as and when they happen.

[JCWolf]

Damn cool lightening !

[Damo]

Woo!! Just had a breakthrough. When the night lighting came on I found that the bulbs in the forward and aft quarters and the engine room kept their white textures (on the shades), causing them to look pink under the red lighting. See here:



When I checked the .tga used in the interior mod, it was different to the one used in the CR, which seem to be more opaque. After a bit of fiddling I swapped them and now all the lights look uniform.

Now, the next thing I'm trying to do is import the ribbed glass effect of those lights in the conning tower (see screenies above) so the rest of the boat has these more realistic shades. I see that the CT examples have an additional texture map with an occlusion setting that produces the ribbed effect.

Just got to figure out how to import that texture layer to the rest of the lights....

[JCWolf]

It gets better and better...

[sabretwo]

The screenshots are looking great!

[ViperU48]

Great Job!

The removal of fog especially gives the interior a new look to it. It does the FM New Interior mod justice by allowing us to see a longer perspective of it.

[flakmonkey]

Originally Posted by Damo

Now, the next thing I'm trying to do is import the ribbed glass effect of those lights in the conning tower (see screenies above) so the rest of the boat has these more realistic shades. I see that the CT examples have an additional texture map with an occlusion setting that produces the ribbed effect.

Just got to figure out how to import that texture layer to the rest of the lights....

You`ll need to change/edit the uv mapping on the lights to get the ribbed effect as i never mapped them to use the same texture as the stock lights (int7.tga/druck7.tga, heck i cant remember which one it uses but the ribbed texture is present in one of those textures.)

Looking good btw

[Damo]

Originally Posted by flakmonkey

You`ll need to change/edit the uv mapping on the lights to get the ribbed effect as i never mapped them to use the same texture as the stock lights (int7.tga/druck7.tga, heck i cant remember which one it uses but the ribbed texture is present in one of those textures.)

Looking good btw

Ahh, ok that helps. I was trying to import the whole textures from the CT.dat into the CR.dat but all that did was leave the halo.tga and the cage around the bulb with no texture of the shade. I'm really just stumbling around in the dark with S3D and found it was the uv map that takes the same rib texture from the torpedo tube status lights etc, I just couldn't get it to import.

I'll take a look at those textures and see if I can crack it, I really would like those textures on all the lights, the realism factor is immense with them on all the bulbs in the boat. I'll hold off uploading the files to you guys until I get it sorted. Thanks again FM!!

[Paul Riley]

I also dislike the bright glare inside the UBoat,this is looking GOOD!
Fantastic work pal.

[R3D]

looks awesome, easerly awaiting !!

[brett25]

why not release what you have and then make versions, alot of people work that way, myself included.I think your early versions are still a big improvement.

[Gilbou]

Beautiful work.

How the hell do you have an engine compartement ?

[flakmonkey]

Fixed lamp models: http://www.filefront.com/15808229/lamps%20models.7z
+I didnt alter the stock control room lamps/bulbs as they should already be using the ribbed texture from int_7.tga and have the proper uv mapping, but i have to admit i didnt check so i may be wrong.

Im assuming youre editing the v1.0 of the interiors mod and not the old beta version, so open NSS_Uboat7_RR.dat with s3d.

- first locate the node for the engine room lamps/bulbs (its under the "GALLEY_DIESEL" interior root node
- expand the lamp node and right click on the 3D Model node, Import>3DModel and locate the supplied file "ENGINEROOM lamps.obj"
- The lamps in the diesel room should now have the proper uv mapping but you still need to alter the material to use int_7.tga to get that ribbed texture.

- locate the material node ENG_lamps.tga, expand the node and right click on the embedded image node, goto import>embedded image and select int_7.tga from the folder i supplied.

You also need to repeat the above steps for the galley/aft quarters lamps, importing the "galley and aftquarters lamps.obj" ive supplied and altering the corresponding materials to use int_7.tga.
For the fore quarters you only need to alter the material/texture since the models already have correct uv mapping.

note: i chose this method for simplicity and to keep the existing material attributes for the lamps, although it does result in multiple copies of the same embedded texture in the dat which is not great for optimization (DD would shout at me for this!) but its only a couple of Mb in this case.
The ideal way would be to create a whole new material with the correct emissive properties and texture, and use that same texture for all the lamps but in my estimation that would be more complex to explain.

Ive included some images as a mini tutorial.
http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/3936/oneoh.jpg
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/7459/twoy.jpg
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/832/threels.jpg

Gilbou the interiors mod has been around for a month or so, here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=162631

[Damo]

Well, that didn't seem to fix it I'm afraid. I've even tried that Blender program but it seems way above my head. I'm going to go on now with the assumption that I'll be releasing as is, without the ribbed textures. I've spent way too long over this small detail and could have released days ago and moved onto other versions. For that reason, I'm done with it.

I'm going to PM you the link to what I have now for you to look at and maybe provide feedback. If you want to take a look at the .dats and see the problem from my perspective with your more experienced eyes, go ahead, but I don't expect you to do so at all. But if there are any glaringly obvious problems you see, please advise me so the community doesn't get a buggy mod.

I'll also send the link to Diving Duck and lucagaeta as my mod adjusts their files. If anyone else feels they should receive the link because I may have changed their work, please PM me or post here.

Be advised that what I've uploaded is a version from a few days ago and some light levels have been altered since, but for the purposes of getting permission to proceed, it is a final representation of what I've altered, just values may be different in the final.

@all

A download should be available within 5 days if all goes to plan and nobody has any objections. The first version will be made for people using BOTH the FM Interiors v1.0 (not the beta), and lucagaeta's Open Conning Tower hatch with food. Next will be for FM Interior v1.0 only followed by a version for OH v3.09. Only the VII is covered for now but other boats will be covered eventually (hey, I wanna play too...). Hopefully that will cover most of the players here but feel free to post if you feel left out, I may make a version for you too if the demand is there.

[JCWolf]

Just sent you the PM response mate!

Thanks


Great light effects!