How to Create Lighted Windows?

[sulleyjoseph]

How do I go about creating the illusion of outside light (That changes as time changes) from a window in the creation kit? I have looked at various examples from various cells but still cannot figure it out.

[hereami]

What i know, there is WindowLightBeam [MSTT:0004DE0A] used originally for this purpose. Should be handled by script i guess, first encountered them in Noirhouse and made turnable on/off by switch for example, but with custom scripts could be more advanced. Also Construction light has visual rays somehow, i think.

ps. Haha, that's all wrong i guess and is just a neat addition, but i believe any building that has a window to outside must also have sun/moon and visible world outside, regardless of being interior cell and game provides that possibility, so natural lighting is there always by default.

Edited June 27, 2022 by hereami

[84Cronos]

How do I go about creating the illusion of outside light (That changes as time changes) from a window in the creation kit? I have looked at various examples from various cells but still cannot figure it out.

 

The easiest way to get this kind of effect is to look at already existing Bethesda cells and see how they did it. It might take some time but it's usually no biggie. But you of course don't want to screw up your .esp with edits of the base game, so you should always(!) have no active plugin while looking at Bethesda stuff. I even unload everything altogether just to be 100% sure. With that being said, there are actually several options which you can use that I know of, which all come with varying degrees of complexity and work that is required on your end and they all look kind of different ingame:

 

 

1.) I think all windows with the suffix "trans" will change their light emittance level based on the time of day. Afaik there are two different kinds, the "normal" Trans windows which use some kind of cubemap to simulate the outside world(They're only visible in game if remember correctly and not in the CK) and then there are "TransExtOpaque" windows which are more solid(The CabotHouse is a good vanilla cell as a reference). The latter option should work right away in the CK but you might need to look at Bethesda cells on how to set them up properly.

 

2.) Option 2 can work in conjunction with option 1 or independently: Go to the lighting tab of your cell and select show sky and in the drop down menu "DefaultInteriorRegion". This will give you the illusion of a sky outside that changes with the time of day. Keep in mind that the sky doesn't emit any light. So what you can do now is just use normal Glass windows to get the feeling of the outside world. You can even combine that with the option to show the outside world LOD.

 

3.) Option 3 is based on option 2 and further "enhances" this approach by also ticking the box "use sky lighting". The problem with that is, that the sky emits light now, which means that light rays will pierce through any not solid object e.g. only one sided walls. This option usually requires the most work because you would need to either use a lot of black planes or make sure that all of your surfaces that face the sky are double sided(for instance by adding just another wall that is turned by 180 degree to the back of a wall on the edge of the level). This option usually is the "most realistic" one as it creates really cool god rays shining through your windows but it also greatly affects the entire lighting of your cell. Again, if you want to know more about this option, check some Bethesda cells and see how they did it for each case.

 

4.) Workaround option: use a script to turn the lights on/off depending on the time of the day. Usually only one enable marker is required which serves as enable parent for all the "window lights". I for one wouldn't really use this option, since there are already systems in place which should take care of what you need. The only circumstance I can think of, where something like this might be necessary, is when you want something super fancy.

[DieFeM]

As 84Cronos pointed, there are certain objects that can be used as the window glass, which uses a material that allows for exterior lighting to be used on them, you can also apply exterior lightning to lights.

Filter by "TransExtOpaque" the one with this suffix works pretty good.

 

You need to select all lights and window glasses, press hyphen, and the "Reference Batch Action" window will appear.

At the right side of the panel, select "Set External Emittance".

At the bottom, there will appear a couple of dropdown menus, in "Exterior Light" select one that starts as "FXLight", or select the region that applies to the exterior location of the windows.

 

Click on "Animate Lights and Effect" in the tool bar to watch the result, and use the time slider to watch the lighting change accordingly. If it doesn't appear to work, press F5 to refresh the Render Window and try again.

Edited June 26, 2022 by DieFeM

[nzukowski]

Darkfox127 has a tutorial vid on emittance, granted it was made for skyrim but it's worth checking out if your still stuck.