help with light map please

[andras1]

Hi

for reasons unknown to me I do not get a the lightmap to work on my model. I just figured out that I had never made a lightmap with FSDS before. Can somebody, please, point me at some tutorial or soem other kind of description where the lightmap texturing is described better than in the FSDS help files.

Thanks

Andras

[Firebird]

Is this for aircraft or buildings as Ii believe that the two are different.

[Weescotty]

Is this for aircraft or buildings as Ii believe that the two are different.

They are -
Lightmap - aircraft
Nightmap - buildings

You need a program for painting that allows you to create an alpha channel.

[andras1]

I am trying to get the taxilights and the landing lights of the planes to work. I am using the redux landing lights on my own models so I never had to take care of a lightmap. Now I am about to put some GA plane models on Avsim. Since most people do not use the 3D lights I wanted to create landing and taxilight effects with the lightmaps and realized that I am totally off regarding light maps. Plus I think the explanations I found are not exactly consistent.

The FSDS help says light maps are controlled by the taxilight. Is this really the case? Then how do the logo lights of the big planes work. They seem to be switched on when the nav lights go on. Do you know what triggers the light map effects. Is depended on the kind of plane eg piston, jet etc?

Thanks

Andras

[Weescotty]

You need a texture with an alpha channel.

Alpha channel -
Black areas - Come on with nav lights
White areas - Come on with landing lights

On the visible part of the texture -
A white area representing a light splash on the tail - the alpha part should be black
A white area representing a landing light splash - the alpha part should be white

Taxi and landing lights are parts created in FSDS (the 'Z' axis points forward on a simple triangle) -
Name - light_taxi
Name - light_landing

Two new materials (no need to change default values)
LIGHT_TAXI
LIGHT_LANDING

Assign the materials to the parts.

[andras1]

Many thnaks,

the only effect of the two parts (light_land, light_taxi) is to get the strange cone on the ground, right? Od does it have another effect as well?

Is the cone on the ground a good idea? the cone-thing is really buggy. taxi light goes off any time the plane stops, at least on my machine.

Andras

[Weescotty]

Many thnaks,

the only effect of the two parts (light_land, light_taxi) is to get the strange cone on the ground, right? Od does it have another effect as well?

Is the cone on the ground a good idea? the cone-thing is really buggy. taxi light goes off any time the plane stops, at least on my machine.

Andras

Correct. Yes it goes off on mine as well when stopped.

[andras1]

Thanks for the help.

I have uploaded the model to avsim. It´s a Piper Archer II with wheel fairings. Paints are made by Charles Dayhuff and the flight dynamics by Mike MacIntyre, which means it flies like a real plane. I am too silly to post a direct link for the download but if your are interested the filename is anai_archer_ii.zip.

Regarding the lights: I have not used taxi lights in the model in order to avoid the on/ off on the taxiways. I moved the landing light z-axis slightly upward to reduce the size of the cone and used a darker than default material which makes the cone less greyish and more yellowish. Alltogether it looks less like 747 landing lights and slightly more like GA landing lights at night - but still far from realistic.

Andras