From the above Image you can
see the Albedo (left) used for the “Bulbs” in their OFF mode and the
corresponding Emissive Texture (Right) used to Illuminate the bulbs when “on”
The resulting effects (seen in the centre image) Show large inconsistencies
between the Emissive “level” and colour of the glow… The White Lamp is
perfect - having a nice illuminated centre and good glow The Amber is just
“Acceptable” with the Nice Illuminated centre but almost No Glow The Blue is
Totally unacceptable with Very little Illumination and very dark Glow The
Emissive values are IDENTICAL in each example and using an emissive level of
15 I am assuming therefore, the variation is due to the RBG / BRIGHTNESS
values Of the textures? so could anyone advise the parameters/values that
would allow for a consistent lighting effect ?
In this albedo sample I used the same brightness values as the bulb off is
going to be dark. To get the correct colors for the emissive you need to make
the colors slightly darker than the albedo as the emissive will do the job of
making it brighter. Also you can control the intensity as both will alter the
final color in sim. So what I like to do to get true color for gauge bulbs or
any bulbs is to go slightly darker brightness on the emissive and set the
intensity to 0.5 in the code. You can also set the intensity in 3ds max
material editor rather than the code. See last image. Overall summary there is
nothing wrong with how Asobo setup the emissive system as they explain in the
sdk that the color and intensity will control the outcome of the light
brightness and color. So the best result in the images below was the “third
row” as I went slightly darker brightness and used 0.5 and you can see the
color matches the albedo.
the Emissive texture I went brighter for the top row and darker for the bottom
row and the same for the middle row. Bottom is best. NOTE: You most likely can
just go the same color as the albedo if you make the albedo darker. I look at
this test now and I think I did not start dark enough. So factor that in. Then
you can just go same dark color and 0.5 for intensity.
Use code to control the
intensity by multiplying by a factor of 0.1 to 0.9. 0.5 gives you perfect
brightness for small bulbs and keep true color if you go slightly darker on
the emissive texture. Or use the method below and set the value in the
Emissive Multiplier. Since you can only have 1 interior material called
“LIGHTS” I prefer to control the value in code so each bulb can be different
if needed.
