CGTalk - Another Question

Seven

07-24-2002, 04:00 PM

Ive made a building. Now i would like the scene at night time. I want the building quite small on screen as part of a city. I havent made it yet so i dont have an image to show. This problem came up before ive even started :)

Anyway how can i give the illusion of all the lights in the windows turned on in the building. As say you would get in New York at night.

My problem is that i dont see a texture will full fill what i want. A texture wont give the volume light feel i want. Previouly Ive tried to do this using a mesh with holes cut in it for the windows. Placed a light inside and that be that.
Hoping the light would only shine out through the gaps and give the lights turned on feel. However i quickly found that that didint work either.

Is there some way i can illumiate a texture to give this feel.

Sev

Seven

07-24-2002, 05:22 PM

heres a good example.

http://www.rocinantestravels.com/pan-am/part09/p09-Las-Vegas-by-night-3548.jpg

The Riviera sign.

Thats the effect i want but from windows in a building. About the same size on screen as those lights aswell. To my knowledge a texture cant produce that effect and i dont know how to do it with lights either. Using outer glow in PS on a texture just looks like that.. outer glow. It just looks like a texture not a light.

Sev

LFShade

07-24-2002, 05:27 PM

You could set it up as a self-illuminated material, and apply a glow effect to the render. Make sure the material effect ID in the material editor matches the ID in the effect.

Or, if you really want to use volumetric lights, you just need to make sure the buildings you're placing lights inside of have "inside" faces (so that shadows are cast by non-window areas). You could model the buildings as hollow shells to acheive this (more difficult), or you could just make sure you're using a 2-sided material (easier).

Hope this helps.

Seven

07-24-2002, 07:54 PM

ah yes... self-illumination, works like a charm.

Thanx

megaflaizer

07-24-2002, 10:31 PM

im totally into procedurals

hers how to do it with procedural

use the brick texture - play around with the settings until you get a good vertical/horizontal pattern that looksl iek a building

in the brick texture tehres an area to randomize the colors - tweak this until you get random lit windows that are yellow - use self ilumination in that channel

then use the glow filter.

the cool thign aobut htis texture is that its easy to tweak for diff buildings

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