LIGHTS and LAMPS 2015-08-30

[MadMax]

ah nice 1 Acumen they look well cool, yea i was unsure about the street lights fitting into tf2 theme but im sure you will find a way

 

[Terr]

It's a good idea to focus on point/globe lights rather than bar-type or flat-panel lights, in order to be able to decorate them with point_spotlight.

 

[Freyja]

You know what would be really cool? Wouldn't really fit the TF2 theme but would fit with the time period...Lava lamps. A red and a blue one. I suppose you'd have to animate it though, not sure how time consuming that would be.

I threw together something. I'm still getting used to modo and havn't figured out how to get stuff into tf2 (otherwise I would make this myself) and if the materials I used in modo like the glass will work in tf2. But here's an idea:

 

[Acumen]

you know what, these were especially my thoughts on lava lamps

wouldn't it be cool to have that sort of gimmick ?
-->it wouldn't really fit the TF2 theme but would fit with the time period

Would look nice ingame with a cool shader on it, right ?
--> I suppose you'd have to animate it though

....Man, that'd be time consuming

so, for myself i deleted the lava lamps from my list, for now, i'm sry :/

your model looks cool, though. don't know if the polycount would be reasonable for tf2, though - looks very round !! ^^

 

[Freyja]

The lamp itself is only 50 polygons, not sure how many triangles that would be. The globs of...oily stuff is what bumps it up. They have 864 polygons. You'd need to simplify them down if you wanted to put it in tf2 for such a small prop.

 

[Terr]

Just an idea, not sure if it's possible with .mdl files... Fake the globs by prerendering them and making an animated texture.

Inside the glass is a single trapezoidal texture which always orients (along the vertical axis) to face the viewer. That texture is just a little 2D animation of globs going up and down, with transparency.

 

[Freyja]

That could work but I have no idea how to get the base model into TF2, let alone make an animated sprite to go inside.
Oh, and somehow I don't think the glass would work...

 

[Acumen]

i really don't know why you are worrying about the glass so much
that's the easiest part, i'd say.

i wanna see a wireframe of these 50 polygons

 

[Freyja]

And without the globs:

If you're wondering why the top is slightly rounded thats because of Modo's subdivide feature which you can turn on for rendering or turn off to make more blocky things. Only the top had it on, (I didn't realise, must have pressed TAB accedently) but it really makes no difference in looks

 

[Altaco]

I know it's a bit off topic, but what's your process for the metal texture? I've been trying to get it to look good like that.

 

[Terr]

I can't get the paraffin blobs to act like the real ones. I'm sure someone's done a dissertation on the subject. Getting the light up from the lower lamp and out through the bottom-blob is probably related to whatever setting is also necessary to get light to shine through the glass and hit the wall.

 

[Lord Ned]

I dunno where you at but I think the lights would work pretty well with a simple AO map and have that set to Multiply over some simple base textures.

 

[Acumen]

kk, did some testcompiles with a few more lights.
i think the scale is something that's very important on these models. maybe i have to bug a mapper later on in development to help me with proper scaling :/
while playing around in hammer, i thought, why not turn that red light upside down
anyways, there's a long way to go...i'll keep you updated - whether or not you want to

 

[Acumen]

added three more lights
apart from the scaling issues i'm not so sure which ones need three skins and which not - gotta figure that out in the end.

 

[Freyja]

I like the top ones, could see myself using them a lot.

 

[SiniStarR]

the triangular ones look great on the floor, those would be perfect for catwalks and such. Nice job btw.

 

[Acumen]

thanks guys. i also like the top ones the most so far
worked on a floor lamp, need to go over the uv/texture again, though

 

[Washipato]

Great work Acumen!

 

[SiniStarR]

lol do i see crappy potatos?

 

[Acumen]

thanks Washipato

SiniStarR, yus ! that's my testmap for all of the models i compile every other day.
the awesome blue brushwork is submarine replacement geometry btw