Making Hospital Ships Light Up

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by timetraveller

iambecomelife,

There is a great freeware program out there called dxtBMP which makes working on images with alpha channels a snap. It was originally written for the flight sim community, but works with any DDS or TGA graphic as a front end program for editing them.

Get it at:

http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/

Click on the dxtBMP button at the bottom of the page to take you to the right page.

The idea behind this program is you open the DDS or TGA file into it, and then you can send the graphic itself or its alpha channel to your existing graphic editing program. The graphic or alpha sent is in bitmap (BMP) form, so almost any graphic editing program will work.

After modifying the graphic or alpha channel, you 'save' the BMP (it goes to a temp file - don't use 'save as'), go back to dxtBMP, and retrieve it. From dxtBMP, you can then easily resave the DDS or TGA.

I've used dxtBMP for several years now, using it on many different game's graphics. It works magic with a simple companion image editing program. It avoids the weirdness and complexity of working with alphas in Photoshop or PaintShopPro which are guaranteed to confuse.

Good luck.

TT

Thanks. I downloaded it but I don't know what you do to make a part of the texture luminescent. I'll keep working on it, though.

Has anyone done this before?

[Dowly]

Any progress on this one?

I got 1 question/suggestion: Can the searchlight be made so that they just point forward and are lit all the time? Maybe add a searchlight to the Hospital ship?

Sry if this sounds stupid, I`m not a texturer/modder.

[Paajtor]

Stupid question: maybe you can try to use the stars as lights? Just stick 'em to the ship?

[Type941]

Originally Posted by Paajtor

Stupid question: maybe you can try to use the stars as lights? Just stick 'em to the ship?

:rotfl:


:hmm:

[Paajtor]

Well, dunno LOL.

I have no idea what makes the starmap overhead.
Is it a bitmap?
Or is it the LightSpot.tga-file (located in ...SilentHunterIII\data\Misc)?

I thought it might be interesting, since the stars flicker a little...what thingy makes them flicker?


P.s. I'm clearly a nOOb at this.

[Hartmann]

Originally Posted by Paajtor

Stupid question: maybe you can try to use the stars as lights? Just stick 'em to the ship?

I think that stars are coordinates in the sky sphere. , perhaps stored in some file with the number of pixels for every star and his position.
It must be a fixed coordinates, not random, because the constellations are easy to see and in the correct positions (orion, casiopea, ...) but with a low number of stars.

Some things like this, or moon reflections are very poorly implemented in the game ..

[Paajtor]

...going slightly OT here: do you think we can give the starmap more detail?
I'd love to see the milkyway.

P.s. the file I was looking for, is Senin.tga, in the same folder.

[Anachronous]

Anything more on this?

[Tikigod]

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopi...er=asc&start=0

[Pdubya]

I just had a passing thought on this... has anyone tried to apply the "window light" effect on the current models just to see how they would look?

Maybe it won't be visible in the daylight hours and would be there once the sun is down... :hmm: of course it could ruin the look of the ship (or give it away at unrealistic ranges) too.

Just a thought,

Pdubya

[Tikigod]

Originally Posted by Pdubya

I just had a passing thought on this... has anyone tried to apply the "window light" effect on the current models just to see how they would look?

Maybe it won't be visible in the daylight hours and would be there once the sun is down... :hmm: of course it could ruin the look of the ship (or give it away at unrealistic ranges) too.

Just a thought,

Pdubya

Who do you think we are? Thomas Kinkade?

/whois Thomas Kinkade

:hmm:

[Tikigod]

Originally Posted by JonZ

/whois Thomas Kinkade

:hmm:

he is an american painter...he is called the "painter of light" he does the sort of illusion deal with his paintings... that change from day to night....like windows and lights appear to illuminate if you lower the light levels in your home...lights in room =on painting looks like it is daytime.....lower the lights or make it darker in room - paintings look like they are at night....lights on cars, windows, etc light up while rest of painting is remains dark...

go here you will see:
http://www.thomaskinkade.com