I've been searching both here and Train-sim.com for 3 hours now, and downloaded Polymaster hoping that would solve my problem .. it doesn't.
Its a simple question: How do I light my coach interiors at night?
The inside of my coach is all alphanorm - , with a smattering of solid half bright and the outside is all alphanorm+ and solid norm. It loads into MSTS and runs. everything looks as it should. At night the coach is in darkness except the solid half bright.
If I try to make the interior light up at night, I gathered by reading all that I can that I had to use alphabright. I tried a few items, walls, seats with alphabright and alphabright - without changing anything else. In the Shape Viewer the selected interior items lit up in the dark. Trouble was it crashed during the test activity loading. It probably has something to do with the order of how you use alphabright and alphanorm (I have the exterior alphanorm + as I dont want it to illuminate at night).
There are no topics, even in the archives, that the search can find about coach lighting. I tried "lighting", alphabright, coach lighting etc. So! Can one of you guys let me in on how to light the coach please without it crashing the sim.
Thanks, Mike
Coach lighting
Moderator: Moderators
Not sure on the TSM issue but if thats the case it'll still apply some material to those parts, if there all in there own group, ie interior then you can use Paul Gausdens shape editor to look in the mdl afterwards and undo what TSM did up ?, make sense ?, ie edit outside of TSM.
You will need to make sure the bits you want lit are in one group then you can edit those parts afterwards to which ever effect you wish, lit, dark, shine etc.
Best regards
Michael
You will need to make sure the bits you want lit are in one group then you can edit those parts afterwards to which ever effect you wish, lit, dark, shine etc.
Best regards
Michael
-
snowcrashandy
- Gen-Finder-in-Chief
- Posts: 993
- Joined: Thu Dec 06, 2001 12:00 am
- Location: In amongst the pondlife
Re: Coach lighting
What you need to do is make sure every internal part is set as alphabright-/solidbright- (or halfbright)meonia wrote:I've been searching both here and Train-sim.com for 3 hours now, and downloaded Polymaster hoping that would solve my problem .. it doesn't.
Its a simple question: How do I light my coach interiors at night?
The inside of my coach is all alphanorm - , with a smattering of solid half bright and the outside is all alphanorm+ and solid norm. It loads into MSTS and runs. everything looks as it should. At night the coach is in darkness except the solid half bright.
If I try to make the interior light up at night, I gathered by reading all that I can that I had to use alphabright. I tried a few items, walls, seats with alphabright and alphabright - without changing anything else. In the Shape Viewer the selected interior items lit up in the dark. Trouble was it crashed during the test activity loading. It probably has something to do with the order of how you use alphabright and alphanorm (I have the exterior alphanorm + as I dont want it to illuminate at night).
There are no topics, even in the archives, that the search can find about coach lighting. I tried "lighting", alphabright, coach lighting etc. So! Can one of you guys let me in on how to light the coach please without it crashing the sim.
Thanks, Mike
Join all those parts together, name them "interior" with parent "Main" then export in the usual way.
Cheers,
Andy.
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Mike,
I've just found:-
http://www.elvastower.com/forums/index. ... wtopic=139
might be of interest to you.
Richard
I've just found:-
http://www.elvastower.com/forums/index. ... wtopic=139
might be of interest to you.
Richard
-
fadedGlory
- Well Established Forum Member
- Posts: 746
- Joined: Sun May 26, 2002 12:00 am
- Location: The Modeller's Annex to the Secret Routebuilder's Castle
I am a bit puzzled why it doesn't work for you. I too use TSM and Polymaster, and in my recent GER bogie coaches I have used AlphNorm+ for the exterior sides and SolidHlfBrt, TransHlfbrt and AlphHlBrt- for various bits of the interior, and the insides light up nicely at night.
I only use two groups in Polymaster, I put all the transparent bits (interior and exterior) in a separate group.
fG
I only use two groups in Polymaster, I put all the transparent bits (interior and exterior) in a separate group.
fG
Thanks guys. The good news is I got my coaches to light up inside due to a little help from all of you. But its all a little strange how the system works, nothing seems to be definite for anybody.
What I have had to do so far from the beggining is this:
I had the alpha bug. I have glazed windows inside and outside my coach so the carriage sides were alph norm. The interior objects, walls, floor etc of my coaches were invisible (disappeared) when looking thru the windows. All I saw was sky, bogies and scenery on the other side of the train. When viewed internally, ie not thru windows, everything looked fine. The inside items were made of solid normal, solid half bright, alpha normal and trans normal materials. The ouside was made of alpha normal material. I asked for help.
The advice I got was make all the inside alpha normal -, and the outside either alpha normal or alpha normal +. At first I made all the inside parts that needed transparency, like walls and 1 dimensional items alpha norm -, other objects like partitions etc that did not need transparency I made solid norm. The outside of the coach I made Alpha norm + for the parts that needed Transparency and Solid norm for the parts that did not. There was also a spot under the coach that I used Solid Drk. This worked and the interior contents of the coach became visible through the windows and still retained the glazing inside and out. I could also look through the coach out of the opposite windows.
Next I wanted to light up the coach at night. Logic would say convert Alpha norm - to Alpha bright - and solid norm to solid half bright. This does not work! I tried it on Shape Viewer and it looked good but crashed MSTS while loading. Andy put me on the track by saying convert everything in the inside to alpha bright-/solid hlfbright and join them all together. This I did and it did not work either. Then I noticed Richard said TSM will only recognise 2 materials, so I made everything inside alpha bright - and joined it all together ..... Voila! it worked and my coachinteriors are lit up at night.
Other advice I got was to use Paul Gausdens Shape Manager, and also from my own searches I downloaded Polymaster. Paul's Shape Manager helped me find that I had an errant material (alpha bright) that was accidently on an interior object that was partly to blame for the above crashing problems. Unfortunately it did not say which part so I had to search each of over 100 items with F2 to find it.
I downloaded Polymaster during my searches hoping that would solve the problem. It seems to be for the alpha bug problem. I read the instructions that Faded Glory had kindly interpreted and, maybe its me not understanding, but they did not relate to the polymaster window on the screen. There was no column L1 or little boxes to put an x in, or small window in the top right. I had no way of following the instructions. Instead I tried decompressing the S file manually, altered the contents of alph in wordpad according to the instructions, saved and recompressed. It did nothing noticeable and MSTS still crashed on load up, so I gave up on the Polymaster route. Seemed to complex compared to making everything alpha bright - and joining it all together
Thanks again everybody. I'll post a pic of my Motor Brake Third of 5BEL, the Brighton Belle in the old livery in a few days so you can see your advice at work.
Mike.
What I have had to do so far from the beggining is this:
I had the alpha bug. I have glazed windows inside and outside my coach so the carriage sides were alph norm. The interior objects, walls, floor etc of my coaches were invisible (disappeared) when looking thru the windows. All I saw was sky, bogies and scenery on the other side of the train. When viewed internally, ie not thru windows, everything looked fine. The inside items were made of solid normal, solid half bright, alpha normal and trans normal materials. The ouside was made of alpha normal material. I asked for help.
The advice I got was make all the inside alpha normal -, and the outside either alpha normal or alpha normal +. At first I made all the inside parts that needed transparency, like walls and 1 dimensional items alpha norm -, other objects like partitions etc that did not need transparency I made solid norm. The outside of the coach I made Alpha norm + for the parts that needed Transparency and Solid norm for the parts that did not. There was also a spot under the coach that I used Solid Drk. This worked and the interior contents of the coach became visible through the windows and still retained the glazing inside and out. I could also look through the coach out of the opposite windows.
Next I wanted to light up the coach at night. Logic would say convert Alpha norm - to Alpha bright - and solid norm to solid half bright. This does not work! I tried it on Shape Viewer and it looked good but crashed MSTS while loading. Andy put me on the track by saying convert everything in the inside to alpha bright-/solid hlfbright and join them all together. This I did and it did not work either. Then I noticed Richard said TSM will only recognise 2 materials, so I made everything inside alpha bright - and joined it all together ..... Voila! it worked and my coachinteriors are lit up at night.
Other advice I got was to use Paul Gausdens Shape Manager, and also from my own searches I downloaded Polymaster. Paul's Shape Manager helped me find that I had an errant material (alpha bright) that was accidently on an interior object that was partly to blame for the above crashing problems. Unfortunately it did not say which part so I had to search each of over 100 items with F2 to find it.
I downloaded Polymaster during my searches hoping that would solve the problem. It seems to be for the alpha bug problem. I read the instructions that Faded Glory had kindly interpreted and, maybe its me not understanding, but they did not relate to the polymaster window on the screen. There was no column L1 or little boxes to put an x in, or small window in the top right. I had no way of following the instructions. Instead I tried decompressing the S file manually, altered the contents of alph in wordpad according to the instructions, saved and recompressed. It did nothing noticeable and MSTS still crashed on load up, so I gave up on the Polymaster route. Seemed to complex compared to making everything alpha bright - and joining it all together
Thanks again everybody. I'll post a pic of my Motor Brake Third of 5BEL, the Brighton Belle in the old livery in a few days so you can see your advice at work.
Mike.