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Simulating Radiant Light Sources with trueSpace
One feature that trueSpace lacks is the ability to display light sources as visible/renerable objects. The ability to render light sources as visible objects is a key component of many of the CGI sequences you see each week in television shows like Babylon 5, Seaquest DSV, Deep Space Nine and Space Above and Beyond (to name a few) that use Lightwave and other similar 3D packages that DO have this ability.
I've discovered one work around that allows you to simulate this effect in
trueSpace. The following tutorial
will demonstrate how you can simulate radiant light sources with a simple
ploygon in conjunction with a local
light source.
Suggested Environment:
BACKGROUND - BLACK
LIGHTING - Delete Default Lighting and replace with a Single infinite source that is above the grid plane on the Z axis.
CREATING THE LIGHT DISK
1. Start a new scene with the above paramenters. If you are unsure how to change these parameters refer to the Terrain Tutorial (in the section that covers lighting).
2. Choose the Regular Polygon tool and set the number of faces to 32 (to vary the effect you may alter this number. Lower numbers will result in a more faceted outer radius, higher numbers will result in a smoother outer radius when rendered).
3. Once you have your settings the way you want them, create a circular polygon like this:
4. Next use the Quad Divide tool to divide the circular polygon like this:
PAINTING THE LIGHT DISK
So far all we have is a sub-divided polygon. To transform this into something
that we can use to simulate the radiant glow of a visible light source we
have to do a little object and vertex painting.
5.. Right click on the active paint tool to activate the material
controls dialogue boxes.
7. Set the Ambient Glow, Shininess, Roughness and Refraction controls to zero. Set the Transparency control all the way to 100.
8. Paint the disk with the Paint Object tool. This will make the wire frame of the disk disappear. To restore the wire frame press the Wire frame Display button.
9. After you have activated the numerical dialogue boxes enter the following:
(Note: By right clicking on the material controls you will activate a numerical control dialogue. The same holds true of the material color dialogue.Using the numerical controls allows us to communicate color settings without the necessity of having to trade material libraries or scene files).
Ambient: 1
Shine: 0
Rough: 0
Opacity: 1
Refract: 1
10. Using the Paint Vertices tool paint the intersection in the center
of the circular polygon.
Below are a few personal samples using this technique:
Notes:
In the above scene the asteroids were created using the techniques mentioned in the Terrain Tutorial , only this time they were applied to sphere primitives. The texture maps are basically differing shades of gray with the orange (orange.tab) texture that comes with trueSpace applied. To get a larger disk in the center of the glow to simulate a sun/star a second disk was placed in front of the "glow disk" and painted white. The main lighting comes from a single infinite source placed behind the moon and asteroids. The star background is the same one that was used in the Planet tutorial.
Notes:
In the above scene the radiant light disk technique was used to simulate the engine flare. The light disks were used in conjunction with two local lights to simulate the light generated from the exhaust glow. The main light for the scene is a single infinite source. The model itself is basically a collection of "borrowed" parts. If the engine pods look really familiar it's because they are the top section of the Babylon 5 space station model. This section was duplicated and reversed for the second pod (Babylon Squared ?) . A simple sphere primitive was stretched and placed in between the two pieces of the Babylon 5 superstructure and there you have it - nearly instant spaceship.
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