Backgrounds and lighting

Backgrounds and lighting

<<Adding objects to the scene

Part 6

Now we should have a basic textured scene and we are going to add to that by adding a reflection map to the door handles and a skybox outside

Select the doorhandles texture in the hypershade

Click on the black and white checkered box next to reflected color

then file

A new box should open then select the folder button

pack_tutorial\sources\scenes\textures\spheremaps

eucalyptus_grove

Click that then open

Note that textures can only be to the power of 2 and 4 256 512 1024 2048

Otherwise they will not be converted into dds and will not work

Sometimes a texture will not convert anyway and you will need to convert it manually and put it in the correct folder i have only had this happen once

This is how we add textures to any object in the game feel free to add textures to everything in the scene but im not going to bother for this tutorial

Next thing to do is open the start.ini in the file maker

And uncomment

//compress = true;

so its

compress = true;

This will compress the textures into the correct folder but it will do this every time if the line is uncommented so remember to only do it when you have added a new texture

Run the filemaker then have a look at the texture ingame

Now all the materials its applied to will look like metal and have a nice shine to them

Except the door handles they look like disco balls

there is a way to fix this but it does add more polys to the door handles

Select the door hold right click and go to face

Select the door handle

Hold ctrl then hold right click and go to shell

Go up to mesh then separate

Select the door handle

Go to mesh then smooth

Then select the door handle and door then go mesh combine

This will reattach the doorhandles to the door but will mess up the pivot point which we will have to fix

If we did not detach it then the whole door would have been smoothed and would look wrong

Save then run the filemaker to see it ingame

Next we are going to add our skybox

But first we need to know how big to make it

Import the roads and buildings from the Background folder I did not make these objects they are assests from Autodesk 3ds Max Learning Channel so credit goes to them

Rename them bad : and apply the lambet1 texture to them all or add your own textures, Again im not going to for this tutorial

Next make a sphere that covers the roads and name it skybox

Then make a new Lambert texture called skybox

Click the checker box next to colour and choose file then the folder button and find the skybox texture

Apply the skybox texture to the sphere and tick textured to see it

If you can see the black line then move the sphere down a bit

Next open up the skybox texture and the ambient color is how bright the texture is so for this one around 10% or dark gray works well also put diffuse to 0

Save the scene and run the file maker with the compress uncommented to convert the files to dds

Notice how much longer that took imagine it with 30 more textures that’s why comment out the compress line when not using it

My skybox did not work its just black?

That s because the faces of the sphere are facing outwards

select the skybox go to normals > reverse

Save the scene re-run the filemaker and check it out now

Much better but what happens when we use fluids in the map since the lowest object is where fluids get deleted they have to make it all the way to the roads below test it out now

I managed to get to 4 fps

So we need to fix this but first fill out the city using the 3 buildings and duplicate them around (center their pivot first) not like 200 buildings tho just add enough to fill it out a bit

Save and check it out

When you are happy with it attach all the buildings together like we did with the doorhandle mesh > Combine

Now next to the scene.ma is a scene.ini open that

This controls all the models in the game that come from the scene.ma

Down the bottom add in (rename your objects to match or change the code) rdi uses the first name and rd uses the 2nd

rdI "Buildingsall"
{
  light_group = 0;
 
  outside = true;
  visible = true;
 
  ambient_light {name = "mainAmbientLight";}
 
  ss_override = true; 
  light[0] {name = "mainDiffuseLight";}
 
}
rdI "roads1"
{
  light_group = 0;
 
  outside = true;
  visible = true;
 
  ambient_light {name = "mainAmbientLight";}
 
  ss_override = true; 
  light[0] {name = "mainDiffuseLight";}
 
}
rd "SkyboxShape"
{
  elem[0]
  {
    outside = true;
  }
}

outside = true; means that the object is in the background and fluids wont be effected by it

Save the file and scene and run the filemaker and check to make sure fluids get deleted where they should

a nice smooth 60fps for me

Notice why i joined all the building up into one object otherwise you would have to add each building to the scene.ini

Next thing we will cover is shadows

In Maya select the buildings and in the 2nd name tab find the down arrow next to render stats

Casts shadows when unticked will add shadows ingame Recieve shadows when unticked will recieve shadows ingame Motion blur when unticked will enable ambient occlusion when ingame

Do this for each object in the map that you think would need this

One sided textures only cast shadows if their main side is facing the light back side wont cast shadows like the ceiling

Save the scene and test it out

I will note however that the lighting is a bit hard to get right in version 3 and im hoping it will be better in version 4

Like if you look away from an object it will unload it from the world and will take its shadow with it

Also you can only have one shadow casting light at one time and it must be a directional light

We can cheat and bake shadows into the texture maps to fake shadows if you can be bothered

But while we are on lighting and have the scene.ini open lets go over the lights in there

lightI "mainAmbientLight"//----This light casts light evenly across the map with no shadows
{
  intensity = 0.5;//---- How bright the light is
  color     = (255,255,255,255);//---- Colour of the light
 
  default = true;//---- Not too sure but i think it means use it?
}
 
 
 
lightI "mainDiffuseLight"//---- This light is the main shadow caster in the map and will light and shadow the map from one direction
{
  intensity  = 0.6;//---- How bright the light is
  intensity2 = 0.6;//--- How wide the light is?
  color      = (255,255,250,255);//---- Colour of the light
 
  default = true;//---- Not too sure but i think it means use it?
 
 
  cast_shadow = true;//---- If the light will cast shadows and only works on directional lights
 
  shadow_dyn  = true;//---- If the light will cast moving shadows like the player and objects?
 
  shadow_buffer_width  = 4096;//--- Shadow map detail,default 2048
  shadow_buffer_height = 4096;//--- Shadow map detail,default 2048
 
 
  group = 0;//---- Which group the light belongs to
this can also be added to objects
}
 
 
lightI "mainDynamicLight"//---- A different named directional light
{
  usage   = NEVER;//---- This light wont be used
 
  intensity  = 0.5;
  intensity2 = 0.5;
  color      = (255,255,250,255);
 
  dynamic = true;//---- I don’t know
}
 
lightI "pointLight1"//---- A point light does not cast shadows
{
  intensity  = 0.7;//----How bright the light is
  intensity2 = 1;//---- How wide the light is?
  color      = (255,255,250,255);//---- Colour of the light
 
  group = 0;//---- Which group the light belongs to
this can also be added to objects
}

Feel free to move the lights around the scene and align the main diffuse light up with the sun on the background

In the next part we will learn how to do collisions and doors

Part 7's breathing just got a bit faster

>>Collisions and doors