Problem Skylab Ineriors - In the Dark

Usonian

Historic Ship & Base Developer
Addon Developer
Donator
Joined
Mar 23, 2008
Messages
220
Reaction score
1
Points
18
Location
Asheville, NC
I am starting work on version 3 of Skylab1973 a major update including the station's interior. I know that a mesh material can be made self-illuminating by editing the last line of the material's definition section in the .msh file. But when I do this the color of my materials is altered and definition is lost (obviously, you can't cast a shadow on a lit light bulb!) But without self-illumination, Skylab's interior will go dark every time the sun sets in LEO. Even in daylight, my self-illuminated materials look bad:

One of the Orbital Workshop's lockers with no self-illumination...

Locker-Zero.JPG


Same locker with illumination set at 50% illumination...

Locker-5.JPG



Clearly I am missing a trick - the various Shuttles and Greg Burch's addons all have convincingly illuminated cockpits. Is it all done with textures? Smoke and mirrors?

I'm completely in the dark. Help me see the light!
 

T.Neo

SA 2010 Soccermaniac
Addon Developer
Joined
Jun 22, 2008
Messages
6,368
Reaction score
0
Points
0
It's done with the emissivity value.

I don't know what it is for the shuttles or for Greg Burch's addons, but the DG uses a value of 0.1 and it seems fine.

Put the value too high, and everything just gets washed out.
 

Urwumpe

Not funny anymore
Addon Developer
Donator
Joined
Feb 6, 2008
Messages
37,588
Reaction score
2,312
Points
203
Location
Wolfsburg
Preferred Pronouns
Sire
You can disable the shading algorithm of Orbiter Rendering by a flag in the mesh group properties, this way you can colorize the objects yourself as you need them.
 

BrianJ

Addon Developer
Addon Developer
Joined
Apr 19, 2008
Messages
1,676
Reaction score
900
Points
128
Location
Code 347
Hi Usonian,
try setting the emissive value to the same as the diffuse value, then set ambient, diffuse and specular values to 0 i.e.

before (not self illuminated)
Code:
0.6 0.6 0.6 1      // diffuse
0.6 0.6 0.6 1      // ambient
0.4 0.4 0.4 1 15  // specular
0 0 0 1              // emmisive
after (self illuminated)
Code:
0 0 0 1
0 0 0 1
0 0 0 1
0.6 0.6 0.6 1
I guess you could use a specular value with that, but I never got good results.

Cheers,
Brian
 

CigDriver

Donator
Donator
Joined
Mar 27, 2008
Messages
194
Reaction score
0
Points
0
If you put texture maps on each object you can then just set the emissivity value to something other than 0 and still have colors. The higher the value the less outside light will effect the look of the object. The hyperdart's interior has the emissivity set to 0.6. that way you do get a little shading in daylight, but at night it looks like you have an interior light on. I also have shading burned into the textures to keep them from looking too flat.
 

Usonian

Historic Ship & Base Developer
Addon Developer
Donator
Joined
Mar 23, 2008
Messages
220
Reaction score
1
Points
18
Location
Asheville, NC
BrianJ and CigDriver,

Thanks for the tips. I am having some success applying your suggestion.

I am going to have to do a lot more work with textures on this project than usual -- just about all interior surfaces will need to have a texture. I suppose this explains why the base Orbiter install has several textures that are just plain color -- white, black, red -- to "paint" self-illuminating vessel interiors with "texture" rather than "material."
 
Top