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Need Advice on Figuring Out Custom Light Fixtures in 3DS Max


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After having a relatively easy time creating an animated room divider for the workshop, I wanted my next piece to be a floor lamp; unfortunately, the animation for a light seems to be more complex. Not creating the actual light effects, but animating the texture of the light bulb so that it's consistent with the light it's meant to put out. (Here's an image of the whole piece, sans texture)

 

http://i.imgur.com/7Z14dIO.png

 

What I know so far:

  • A typical workshop light (the hanging bulb, High Tech lights) is composed of a full mesh with the bulb included and a "false" light bulb over the in-mesh one that is scaled up to cover the original. It's on this larger light bulb that the actual animation takes place.
  • The animation itself is of the material on the light bulb, from dark to light color and back again
  • There's no separate material made outside of 3DS Max, so whatever is done on the light is done directly in the Material Editor in the program
  • There are typically four animation states for a workshop light: UnpoweredOn, On, Off, UnpoweredOff

What I'm trying to figure out:

  • In the Material Editor, I think the material type that should be used is a BSEffectFX?
  • What settings I should use for the material if it even is a BSEffectFX.
  • What some of the settings even do. I don't understand the Alpha tab and Blend Mode settings although I feel that they are important.
  • Should the light bulb have any Havok physics on it? Or could I just leave it without?
  • Why are there UnpoweredOn/Off states for animation? I'm guessing they're necessary, since several lights have them.

Here are my Material Settings. The only thing that the animation changes is the base color.

 

http://i.imgur.com/WgdKJIR.png

 

If anyone has any sort of advice to offer, I'd greatly appreciate it -- especially concerning the Material Settings.

 

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As far as i know you'll have to create all 5 stages of a powering up object, as well as adding the required hkx file using the beth utilities from Tools panel. For this you need to animated the glow, but i don't exactly know how to and was never able to export animated texture correctly.

 

BSEffectFX is for glass and generally glass like behaviours. Alpha is for transparency.

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Thanks for the reply! Could you clarify on what hkx file I'll need to add? Is it found in the Bethsoft Utilities Tool or another one?

 

Alright, I've been looking at the workshop lights in NifSkope under the pretense of trying to "reverse engineer" them, and of these three lights (the hanging light bulb, the industrial wall light, and one of the high tech floor lamps) I've noticed the following:

  • Each one has a BSBehaviorGraphExtraData Block. There's a utility in 3DS Max called BSBehaviorGraphData, so I'm guessing that's where it is created. Is this the hkx file you mentioned?
  • On the industrial and high tech lights, the GlassGlow piece (the part of the light that is animated) is contained in its own NiNode (since its a separate object) with its BSTriShape block as well as a NiVisController.
  • Within the BSTriShape block is a BSEffectShaderProperty and NiAlphaProperty block. Within the BSEffectShaderProperty block is a BSEffectShaderPropertyFloatController, within which is then a NiBlendFloatInterpolator and a BSEffectShaderProperty.

Like This:

-> BSTriShape

->-> BSEffectShaderProperty

->->-> BSEffectShaderPropertyFloatController

->->->-> NiBlendFloatInterpolator

->->->-> BSEffectShaderProperty

->-> NiAlphaProperty

  • Within the NiVisController is a NiBlendBoolInterpolator and a reference back to the GlassGlow NiNode.
  • So it's likely that the bulb is a BSEffectFX with an Alpha property.
  • Another question: Under the Alpha section of this material editor, when I choose Standard or None for Blend Mode, the light bulb appears completely opaque regardless of what the Base value is. When I choose Additive and Multiplicative, the bulb turns slightly transparent and light/dark (respectively) and again cannot be affected by the Base Alpha value. Can anyone explain a reason for this?

->->->->

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The hkx is a havok file, and the tool in max is used to select a havok file and apply it to the current MAX scene before export. You'll want to extract the behaviour files from the game's archive to see what's there to use, though I think most powered workshop items use the workshop.hkx

 

" -> BSTriShape

->-> BSEffectShaderProperty
->->-> BSEffectShaderPropertyFloatController
->->->-> NiBlendFloatInterpolator
->->->-> BSEffectShaderProperty
->-> NiAlphaProperty"
It's pretty much an animated texture. The alpha is providing the transparency, and it gets added if you edit the alpha section of your material in the Material Slate in MAX http://prntscr.com/gate2m
Generally I enable alpha testing and set the alpha to standard with a value of 128. Other values will have different results
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awesome stuff,

your variable geometry stuff, concertina doors etc,

torggler doors, liquid-metal doors, forcefields etc

are awesome. (keying the animation to a button press, and toggling collision, while also cueing the decal animation surface to play, that's awesome)

(I'm looking forward to your approach on Forcefields, holographic-disguised entranceways/fake walls,

and holographic stuff, your 2D-3D ideas are neat!)

 

-----

as to lights, ethreon's guides are a great way to do that

(especially for "Lava-y lava lamps" or lights, such as neon ones,

that you want an animation decal nurbsfacegroup etc to play on, which we'll hopefully see more of with esl framework)

 

i also recommend tilarta and dread74's ideas too

they'll help for diffraction or refraction ideas (such as 'leibniz-gasket 'shadows' for your nuka-cola-quantum bottle, or riemann gradients etc).

if you want to go uber-detailed,

you can even encode the stuff in the game based on it's Planckian blackbody radiative data too.

or plasmonic gradients, lenticular effects based on viewing angle,

all kinds of stuff.

 

you can also 'lightblock', ie, prevent light leakage, when making stuff like

placeable 'blinking wall detail panels' or meters which change animation keyed to the in-game weather cycle.

ie, during a 'rad storm', the panels make noises and go wild sparking and being overloaded etc.

that's done via layer switching and the highest alpha layer

 

 

 

after watching this year's E3 and BethTV sidepanels,

 

your light can also be a particle effect pre-batched,

say, from a memristive AGIXML or AHaH routine etc...

or an outright adam7 layered animation, great for that UV/Xray Pipboy light mod v2

(which will be a 'holotape player', that will properly interact with clouds or other surfaces)

 

presently, I use some textures like that as a 'fault checker'/'bug-checker',as it can find stuff quicker than I can

using MCMC etc...

and click 'pause' when there's a fault.

I'm also looking at the "Visual Similarity Reference Index" VSRI "visri", and using such a process to auto-generate the visual comparison score for submitted pieces - as, due to the nX! worth of parts for weapons, settlement etc,

we'll need some more objective ways to assign the similarity value...

I don't want to solely rely on user-submitted self-reporting values, nor do I want some folks to have to sift through that and apply a rubric hehe.

 

The point - I'm hoping a VSRI will also emerge for light sources in game!

that'd be very handy.

 

that way, in the near future, you can iterate through the nCr/nPr worth of options

for up to 30 pieces attached to 6 placeable nodes, in-game!

you'll be able to save heaps of time otherwise spent sifting through menus, if such a 'randomizer' feature was around.

you can also reduce 'cookie-cutter itis' that way,

and combined with the Sim Settlement/Transfer Settlement stuff forming,

there's a lot of awesome.

 

there's some bethnet creationclub tutorials on how you can do some of that stuff,

it's way beyond me though hehe.

 

 

 

thanks again, I hope this was of some use for you,

and, I look forward to seeing this and many future mods.

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Ethreon: Thanks for clearing that up! I'm pretty sure I've found the file I need; working on it now.

 

montky: No idea what all you're talking about but it sounds cool! I just want this lamp to function like a typical vanilla workshop light -- I don't think I'm ready for the cooler stuff just yet.

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