I dare say I'm making every newbie mistake possible with this, but I'm really stumped. I've been trying to recolour this lamp for my astronaut-wannabe-sim and so far I have managed just fine to recolour the frame and the screen of the lamp. There is no texture file for the lit/unlit states of the screen, so I changed the colours under 'Categorized properties', in the lines 'stdMatDiffCoef' and 'stdMatSpecCoef'. I take it that's correct? I did the same to recolour the base game (I have only base game) rave light and that worked as intended. The rocket lamp, however, looks right unlit, but in the lit state I only get a red lightfiltered through the shade of the lit state screen recolour - I have found no way to change the colour of the actual light. Where have I gone wrong?

Also, since Xanathon hasn't been around for ages and I have found no way to contact him for permission, could I share the objects on my own site once I'm done - with credits and link back to the original mesh on MTS - or is that a baddie?

Try reading this guide from Numenor. It should shed some light (sorry, pun unintended) on how lights work in the package, that hopefully will help you achieve what you have in mind.

Thanks muchly, D4re! Numenor is very informative - this takes me down a bit of a rabbithole, we'll see if I surface anytime soon .

Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated than that. Numenor's information states plainly it is NOT a Tutorial. There's a lot we still dont really understand about light, and that's the reason why so little along the way of modded lights exists. Numenor did accomplish greatness with his Artemide Chimera light, which does change radiant color, but he never did put it into a tutorial. jgwhiteus also had some success with creating and changing lights, but he never did actually upload a tutorial with all his findings... Another problem comes in that, it seems to me he may have been using a much older version of SimPE, because some of the things he refers to I cannot find in the most up-to-date versions of the software. So i think it's changed since then. Anyway, some of his theories on light may be helpful, and they can be found here.

Also, I noticed you had mentioned Xanathon, and looking at his creations, I don't believe the "light" objects he created actually give off any radiant light, with the exception of white. Light objects have sort of a glowy look to the object itself, and then they also cast off a light onto other surfaces around them. His objects have that glowy look, but do not appear to cast off any radiant light. Those are two completely separate things. The glowy look isn't all that difficult to achieve. It's the radiance that's a major ball-buster!

Good luck! And if you DO figure it out, please write a tutorial to share with the rest of us!! =)


-grinEvilly
>=)

The light by xanthon doesn't use the method described by jgwhiteus, it simply uses the txmt to change the colors of the light. The same as the um floor lamp it was cloned from.

In my game this object is not recolorable, did you fix it before attempting to recolor? Otherwise, weird. Looking at the original um light, the stdMatSpecCoef uses a shade of gray for green/blue (127,127,127) but white (255,255,255) for the red. With this changed, the other two values for editing color, stdMatDiffCoef and stdMatEmissiveCoef, don't give off the correct colors. In my blue test recolor, changing the stdMatSpecCoef to 127,127,127 made the blue colors of the other two lines work correctly.

A helpful bit of info on the TXMT by PixelHate: http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=316260. The "radiant" light given off, is due to having proper shadows in the light object, and the type of light referenced in the lighting.txt files.

grinevilly (silently applauding your username) - Oh, I'm not going to actually try to mof radiance light - after what I read in other threads I was already sure I didn't need to do that in order for this lamp to work correctly anyway - but Numenor explained a lot of things about how the lights work in game that I found both fascinating and helpful. I am at the modding level of "Gaaah! There's no actual texture file to recolour! I'm doomed!!" so no chance of me even accidentally repeating Numenor's results . I'm sticking to bedding recolours and this darned rocket lamp, but that doesn't stop me from reading through and being fascinated by what others have done.

Huge Lunatic - Oh thank you!! The stdMatSpecCoef is something I hadn't even thought of changing, that seems to be it. And more info on TXMT is exactly what I needed, again thank you !
And yes, I did start by making it recolourable, so not weird .

Ah, thank you very much, @AnMal Typically, i capitalize the E. For some reason, when I created my account at MTS, it didn't take. It was likely my error. haha.

I, too, found the stuff that jgwhiteus's and Numenor's wrote about fascinating ...and well beyond my abilities! haha. I have not fully given up yet, because I have a LOT of ideas i'd like to see with radiant environmental light. But i can't really read programming very well and i was never very good at it. So i'd need some help from somebody with much better talent than I have to lead me by the nose. For one thing, i'd like to make undercarriage lighting for sims cars. How cool would that be?

I did have a LITTLE success with a couple items, thanks to some help from an outstanding and accomplished modder friend. We had been working together a little bit on creating some fun stuff for the future, and I think that's where the TXMT editing comes in. That's how you go about giving the object an appearance of glowing. It's sometimes referred to as "fake light" because it doesn't actually produce any light into the surrounding environment. The object appears "lit" through the TXMT, but it doesn't cast off any light that way. I think that's what my "Disagreer" misunderstood about my post.

HL is correct, in that the lights by Xanathon don't use the method described by jgwhiteus. But that's because they DONT change the color of the light. They don't cast off any colored light at all. I believe he has a couple that do cast off white light, but that's not a modded light. For example, you can make a light bulb object look to be "lit" and red, by editing the TXMT. But if it is a light object, it will only cast off white light (or whatever colored light it was cloned from, if i remember right), regardless of what color its TXMT is set to display. That's what would have to be edited in the lighting.txt files.

Now, the good news is, it's totally possible to achieve this! Numenor and jgwhiteus, and a few others have created those colored lights, and there are several items in the game that give off varied light colors... Several lamps and a bar counter. So it IS doable. We just don't have all the details on HOW, and only a limited number of people have ever been successful. THAT is where MY interest lies, because tweaking the TXMTs is one thing... But that only effects the object you've tweaked, and has no impact on the surrounding environment. THAT'S the magic I wanna see unlocked!! =)


-gE
>=)