object faces get strange lighting

I wouldn’t dream of questioning anything here until it was creased! andnbsp;

I have been told by someone from Train-Sim forums that this is mostly caused by 3dC’s rendering of the model and won’t affect the imported model. andnbsp;We’ll see… I plan to import by early this week. andnbsp;He also noted that adding lights causes this to be worse. andnbsp;I have added lights. andnbsp;It gets dark underneath those big boilers! I plan to remove them because I understand they may cause headlights, etc… to be added to the MSTS engine.

In 3dC, I am getting a strange reflection effect from certain faces in an object. andnbsp;I have not exported to the Simulator yet. andnbsp;Can you tell me the cause of this, and should it affect the object in the Sim?

It seems like a specularity issue. andnbsp;The affected faces seem to shine, like with specular lighting. andnbsp;They are faces where complex subtractions/unions were done, and I manually cleaned up the resulting object with it’s unusual points that were created. andnbsp;I have tried creasing, andquot;cutandquot; tool (both by selecting the face, and by selecting the different edges). andnbsp;Could I delete the face, and rebuild it? andnbsp;I have been looking for such a function. andnbsp;I am aware of the andquot;fill facesandquot; tool. andnbsp;But isn’t it used only on objects as a whole? andnbsp;In a 3dMax tutorial, I saw an operation that allows the selection of points in a pre-determined order (counterclockwise) and it creates a face. andnbsp;Is there a similar way to accomplish this in 3dC?

thank you

And if you select/highlight a face on a different object, the lighting goes away. andnbsp;Is this a problem that will show up in Train-Sim. andnbsp;Is there a problem with the faces on this object? andnbsp;How to fix?

Thanks

This is a little confusing, so here are some pictures of what is happening. This one face (the light gray area below the selected face) lights up whenever you highlight/select a face on that object that it is part of.

The 3DC renderer does do things differently to the MSTS one, particularly when transparency is involved.

One question though, have you applied crease yet?

Select the boiler object then press the crease button, then slide the slider left down to zero and press OK. Then in MSTS it will look more cylindrical.

You should also apply the default crease (17?) to other objects, or groups of faces, particularly if you have shifted or rotated them at some point during the model making, otherwise odd faces on the shadow side of the model will look lit up, and vice-versa once in MSTS, and sometimes rotating wheels will appear to ‘flash’ going light then dark, as they go round. Applying the ‘crease’ operation seems to make 3DC rethink how light should affect these faces. (over to Richard for the technical explaination)

Here’s the latest. I can’t emphasize enough;
[b:xryachvg]andquot;It’s the textures, stupid!andquot;[/b:xryachvg]
I can only claim to be able to drag and stretch boxes into shapes, but our texture man Engineer Kyle Fawson deserves the Kudos. For his artistic work, and putting up with my complaining; andquot;This is too darkandquot; andquot;This is too highandquot; andquot;This doesn’t belong hereandquot; andquot;Add more shadowandquot; etc…
Notice nothing is textured below the boiler yet. andnbsp;Seems like we should be finishing up soon, but then you think about that and realize it might be a little while, yet!

This is the most complex object I’ve built yet, but I’ve never had any problems with 3dC importing. andnbsp;I try to fix objects as I go, getting them as simple and clean as possible. andnbsp;Otherwise, I tend to miss things. andnbsp;I never mess with Specularity settings until last. andnbsp;I always texture an object using the fill tool, then re-apply the textures. andnbsp;I haven’t even begun to animate yet. andnbsp;As for frames, I have yet to set them. andnbsp;I don’t really care about those because they are easier to set all at once, if you use the groups carefully. andnbsp;If there is an issue, most everything is separate at this point, I’ll just move things around til it worls. andnbsp;I have found that worrying about these individual things as I build tensd to make it more complicated. andnbsp;It may be somewhat tedious to fix them all at once, but I don’t forget anything that way.

That is patience for you, I could not have done that much modelling without trying it in MSTS by now. I usually start with just the wheels and chassis, then keep trying it after every modelling session.

Problems you might encounter will be:

– forgetting to shift the axis of the ‘main’ object down to rail level (well just below actually) I always forget.
– leaving a face untextured somewhere
– applying some texture with the specular set to zero, so it glows in the dark
– animation of the driving wheels and motion

I always do at least one of the above, I never learn.

You may have a problem with the complexity of this model. If it does not load into MSTS, you may have to play around with hierarchies so that there are not too many objects at a particular level or in a particular group. The number of polys in your model is going to be a problem with the frame rates you get when it finally does get into MSTS though.