as i said ..its starting to become
a lot of fun using this engine..
and I used EQUITY to import
most of my models into .act files
and i must say..it did a great job.
i dont mind council either..
I wanna get this looking and Feeling good.
It is dark,and i cant see very well that castle-like interiors which i like.
Raise the brightness and radius of the lights so we can see more of it.
If you do not want to brighten it too much,then place large radius medium colored lights and smaller bright lights for the highlights (would give some contrast and on any passing by pawn).
A common contrast technique is: Light/Shadow/Light/Shadow.
You can smooth the most dark places by adding dark colored lights in.
Avoid having black areas and dont use the default color.
If one big light makes the geometry look flat,use two smaller lights at angles that leave a "dark" side.
I think you will do fine with the contrast and if you want,post some more screens for the fans (if you have nt reached your file attachment limit yet).
Also it helps others to understand where the light is coming from if you place torches -or something near the lights-it might look realistic.
can we add bunpmapping to . act files ???
because all my geometry is actully
made up of .act files ??
if so..i'd be more than willing to learn how to do it...
also has anyone thought of adding a small
program in here that would let us all
set up our monitors brightness and contrast levels
so they would be set to a normal range
and not too dark or t oo bright..such as comes on certain dvd's
for setting up your tv.
so that we will all see how the game would look when it is played by others.
many set theirs either too bright or too dark nd so the game looks
totally different to every one.
thx again....im off to look at bumpmapping.... woo hoo..
Well first of all your graphics card needs to support it. Mine only supports dot3 and not EMBM so I can't use buumpmapping for the level geometry. If you look in the RF docs it explains what it is.
Dot3 is suppored by RF for Actors and EMBM for level Geometry. it requires a diffuse map and a Normal map texture and should have a specular map texture. The Diffuse map is your standard texture, a normal or (bump map) is either greyscale or 256 colour map which holds height information and a specular map is a light map. For dot3 bumpmapping the diffuse texture needs to be named BN0_texturename (that is zero not letter O) the normal or bumpmap labeled BNB_texturename and the specular map BNS_texturename. and for EMBM that you would use in level geometry the prefixess would be BM0_ , BMB_ and BMS_ respectively. When you build dot3 actor the normal and specular maps are added as extra or stored textures in Equity. for level geometry you put all 3 textures in the txl file. When rf sees the prefix it looks for the other textures and applies them. If your card doesn't support bumpmaps then the diffuse texture is used alone. There are programs that will make nice normal maps out there. Texture maker is a good free one. the specular map can be made using texture image converter in the tools folder.
can i do all that to my actors in milkshape
before I export them..???
using the AMBIENT---DIFFUSE----SPECULAR---and ---EMMISIVE buttons and sliders ?
will that add those things in ???
Not in milkshape for some reason. You can make the model and texture it with the diffuse texture it in milkshape & save, then load the ms3d file into equity and add the normal and specular maps as stored textures add any motions then save as .act and thats it. OR load your actor you already made into Equity and change the diffuse texturename BN0_yourtexturename, then add the normal and specular maps to stored texture and save.
REMEMBER that the texturename must be the same for all three maps apart from the Prefix.
ok after that..as i make new animations for it
can i use equity to reload the actor and add the latest
animations in to the character ??
Yes you can add new animations, delete ones you don't want or change the names of animations. Just load your actor go to the motions tab and add/delete/or rename animations then Save Actor As, overwriting your existing actor.
