Clear Sky/Storm Cycle & Night/Day Cycle

[Rens2Sea]

Heyaa,

1. How can i make a storm like in Hatshepsut? Where you first have a nice storm and then the sun shines again.

2. How can i make a night day cycle? In Hatshepsut you also have this (with the storm its dark, when its clear its light.

3. In the last level (The Great Pyramid) when you enter the pyramid there is a cutsequence where you go to a room and in that room every Egypt texture changes to hightech textures. How can i make that?

Lots of questions, i know, but needed for my nice level. :)

[pompey]

there is a tutorial by LSD on realistic rain (go to seriously homepage, click tutorials on the menu). to change from one background to another u need 2 skyboxes and something to trigger a change from one background viewer to another.

[Davor Hunski]

If you want to switch between two separate backgrounds, send Start event to the BackgroundViewer that you want to activate and that's it. If you want to obtain FX that I used in Hatshepsut level, you will have to use another thing. Complete effect is composition of few simple ones. When you see clear background, you see background polygons's first layer. Second layer displays stormy sky but with alpha 0 (alpha is animated trough storm controller-world settings controller-background viewer mechanism, a bit to complex, but you will figure it out: bcgv must point to wsc, strmctrl isn't linked at all!). When storm is started (start event is sent to storm controller), alpha chanell of second starts to animate and inside x seconds it becomes opaque, so bcg's second layer texture overrides first layer. Animated darkening is simoulaniously applied, along with second layer texture blending, but darkening is applied onto shadow multiply color (color on shadow page). So, when you start storm, second layer will morph in, and shadows will get darker (when lightning strikes they will immediately become brighter for a moment giving feeling of level's lighteninhg).

[addman]

ive been looking how to do the effect of fading in on hatsheput as well.
thanx davor. ill try it :)

[LSD]

Any of you figure it all out, post it here, please, as I need to do just that very soon. Thanks.

[Rens2Sea]

Davor, I've did what you said and it works! TNX
But there are still some questions left:

1. How can I make a cloudy day WITHOUT rain? Is it possible?
2. Something weird happens when the lights go down: some textures don't go dark unless you shoot at it... How can I fix this?
3. That thing with rain. The rainmap. Is there any SIMPLE way of making it??
4. How can I make the night darker? I made that rainy day of yours, but I want it to be very dark. How?
5. Do I ask to much?? :D

Cya!

[addman]

lsd, ill write a tutorial once i have finished it completely.
davor: how do i make the sky scroll like yours? ive got it working but it doesnt scroll, i know you didnt use the scroll menu

[addman]

ok. ive wrote the tutorial and sent it to vesto

[viper45]

ok, I've got 2 backgrounds.  I have a touchfield that triggers a trigger....that trigger activates a background.  What am I doing wrong here?  (The background stays the same)

[viper45]

hhmmm, for some reason this didnt go to the top of the page, but my other post did....so *bumb* see if it works now

[addman]

viper, when vesto reads his emails, he will put the tutorial up that i have written,
i might but it up on this thread tonight if i have time

[addman]

if you just want to change the background without fading,
you have to have the trigger start the second background viewer, not the background itself

[LSD]

AddMan asked me to put the tutorial on my site also. So you can go and look at it, it's on my site at http://www.worldspawn.org Hopefully vesto will get his own ass in gear soon.

[mr luc]

LSD, sort of off-topic, but I was wondering: in your Advanced Zoning tutorial, right at the end is a way to keep things inside a separate zoning worldbase from being drawn when you're outside of that worldbase. I was wondering, have you found a workaround for that problem yet? Anything to do with parenting, or something like that?

Also, I didn't see this in the tut, but on the interiors of my 'sphere-method' zoning worldbases, can the interiors be detail polys as well as the outside, or will that result in the whole level being drawn? I forgot that. :)

See, I found a kind of a bug in the Spheres -- if I start to EXIT a sphere, there is a period where I can't see the outside. My question is, since there are three worldbases that need to be connected -- the primary worldbase, the exterior worldbase, and the interior worldbase -- how do I do this? Is it the exact same as the method used for connecting the primary worldbase to the exterior (ie, use identical worldbase portal sectors)? Or should I instead connect the exterior worldbase to the interior worldbase (by doing the same thing, only the two overlayed sectors belong to the ext and int worldbases)?

I like the 'spheres' method best because it lets me use detail polys for the exterior. But using the 'invisible passable' brush to occlude its contents seems kinda irritating, and I always seem to have trouble with the entryways -- I always seem to find a spot in the entryway where I can't see out of the building.

[mr luc]

Hmm, I just had a thought.

Right now, I'm using two identical-sized sectors for the ext and int worldbases, like in the Spheres example. But the sector we add to the primary worldbase is NOT the same size as the other two. Is this intentional, or does it work better if all three are the same size?

Would try it out in editor right at this moment, but no SED on this comp.

[mr luc]

ahem

[LSD]

Um, yeah. I have abandoned these techniques for the more effecient ones found in SS2... er, I mean.. well, be patient. Its only a month or so. Ahem.
But as to all your manymanymany questions... Normally I dont do the third worldbase with the detail polys etc. but for the spheres I considered this to be advantageous. The best way to build is the method used in the central pillar. This is the technique I personally use almost 100% of the time. The spheres could even be done this way, come to think of it... Though Zoning/Detail that seems kind of a conceptual problem.. like Dry Wetness, or Dark Light. Hmm..

[LSD]

Also, referring to the, er, TOPIC of skyboxes. I have and idea of a reasonably easy to construct a day night cycle using the following method. First, I make 4 skyboxes. A sunrise, a sunset, a beginning night, and and ending night. It starts with the sunrise box. This has a Lens Flare set up for the rising sun, and a second directional light that casts light on the level. These are both parented to a moving brush. When the worldsettings controller is triggered, It sets the sun to start rising. It also blends the sunrise textures to the Day time textures on the second layer of the skybox. The mover continues slowly across the sky. When it reaches the other side, the moving brush marker triggers a change to a new skybox. This one starts out as daytime, and blends to a sunset skybox. When this one has finished, it triggers another skybox, this one set to sunset and blends to night, with an animation changer that triggers the lens flare to turn off. This one waits a while, then switches to the fourth one. This is night, and when triggered blends into dawn textures. Just as this finishes, it switches back to the first one, with its lens flare, simulating the sun breaking over the horizon. Throughout all this, we have the second directional light in each box, with light animations applied to them, and triggered by animation changers to change the light of the world as day passes. Note, this technique doesnt work too well if you have terrain, cause terrain is fullbright, and you can only set two textures, instead of the necessary 4. So the terrain would light up, then get dark, then light up at night again, which would look wrong. Theres probably a way around it, I havent come up with yet. Till then dont use this on terrain. Would anyone like me to try and build a tutorial of all that?? You could throw a rain shower into the middle if you desired as well. ;)