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Instructor
Original Poster
#1 Old 27th Jun 2008 at 2:04 AM Last edited by ~Dee~ : 1st Jul 2008 at 4:22 AM. Reason: solved
Default How to edit light patterns?? ( Solved)
I need some help please.
I like to edit the light pattern of a wall lamp I made or make a new one.
But I've no idea how to go about it.
Do I export the pattern like any other texture?
Do I've to UVmap it and if so,do I've to import it into Milkshape first,then into SimPe?
Is it in .png format?
How do I get the rays of light straight?
I know it's grayscale and that the black will be transparent in the game,
but how do I get the light rays all even looking?
Any hint,help (or is there a tut somewhere) would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much.

You can find more of my stuff here: http://www.blackpearlsims.com/downloads.php
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The ModFather
retired moderator
#2 Old 27th Jun 2008 at 8:45 AM
The lightpattern is a real mesh associated to a greyscale texture; therefore, the first thing to do is to modify the mesh, so to make it consistent with your lamp. In general, the mesh of the lightpattern represents the "cone of light" that is produced by the lamp: you can study the meshes of the Maxis lamps (not all have the lightpattern) to better understand what it is supposed to look.

As for the texture, it's a simple greyscale image: the whiter the area, the brighter the light. Thoug you can personally UVmap the lightpattern mesh, I suggest to find a Maxis lamp with a lightpattern similar to yours in its shape, even if the position is wrong. for example, if your lamp requires a "cone" of light going upwards, you could use also thelightpattern of the cheap streetlight: the cone is downwards, but it's easy to rotate and scale it; and apart from the position and size, you are sure that the UVmap is well done and the texture is correctly tweaked.

NOTE: if you modify the texture, the PNG format is OK; reimport it in SimPE in DXT3 format (you can use either the DDS utilities or the standard Import function).

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Instructor
Original Poster
#3 Old 27th Jun 2008 at 9:52 AM
Thank you so much Numenor for taking the time to answer.
I understand what you're saying and I'll give it a go.
Appreciate it very much.

You can find more of my stuff here: http://www.blackpearlsims.com/downloads.php
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