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I have done Schreibi34’s 3 light method before and was trying to replicate it but am having issues getting the values right. For the life of me I cant remember what table I did it on and cant find one, anyone know a good example.
The other thing I was trying was Fuzzel’s tutorial using Blender for realistic lights. I am so Blender illiterate but would love to get this method down pat so I don’t have to mess with VPX lighting. This tutorial looks simple enough but I feel there are a few steps missing in-between that would help a blender illiterate person like myself do it.
Would anyone be willing to go over the tutorial and maybe update it or beef it up a bit for someone like me???? Please
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1. Start Visual Pinball and create a new table.
2. Remove all elements that shouldn’t create shadows, because they move or won’t cast shadows for bulbs like plastics.
3. Export the table as an .obj file
4. Start Blender and import the table you exported in step 3 (maybe some tips for settings like clamp size and y forward and -z up stuff)
5. Create a point light (hotkey is shift+A and select ‘Lamp’ -> ‘Point’ in the context menu) (@bord, you told me before how to duplicate a light but my messages are all gone) (How high to set it, just some more details to help this step)
6. Now set the following values for the point light: Energy=6.0, Falloff: Inverse Linear, Distance=250, select ‘Sphere’ checkbox.
Under Shadow select ‘Ray Shadow’ with Sampling=3 and Soft Size=8 and Constant QMC checked ( Is this a good standard or any other suggestions, anything to add)
7. Now place this point light somewhere on the table where a bulb light should be. (Again how to duplicate and more details if necessary)
8. Do this for every bulb on the table.
9. Now select the playfield and press TAB key to switch into the editing mode.
10. Split the view as shown in the screenshot so you see the UV/Image Editor on the left and the 3D view on the right
11. In the Image Editor you will only see a 2D box that’s the UVs of the playfield. (This seems pretty straight forward)
12. Press the New button under the Image Editor view and create a texture with the size say 2048×4096. This texture will be the new lightmap.
13. Now press the small camera button and press the Bake button. The Bake Mode should be “Full Render” (Mine never comes out right, is there other things that possibly need to be done that are assumed in this tutorial)
14. Blender will now render a lightmap as a playfield texture.
15. Once the rendering is over move the mouse cursor in the Image Editor and press F3 key and save the texure as a .png file
16. Back in Visual Pinball import the lightmap
17. Now create a flasher and give it the same size (width and height) as the playfield.
18. Use the lightmap for ImageA and check ‘Additive Blend’ and an opacity of 150, or 200 or what you like (Have never gotten this far with a quality image, anything to add)
19. Set a proper color for the light. Most bulb lights have a yellowish color
20. Set the height of the flasher to 1 so it’s just a tad over the playfield
21. Start the playerI think this tutorial is awesome but if we update it maybe with screenshots it will help out so many people. I would love to do that if I could get the process down)
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IIRC this method only worked for the Blender stock renderer, not Cycles. Never went back and tried it since I needed Cycles lights for other stuff I wanted to do on my projects. The effect is nice, though.
You should be able to duplicate a light by selecting it and pressing shift+d.
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https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=blender+cycles+vs+eevee
I’m only really shaky ground here, but, I believe, in general, cycles is more presise, but also requires more time to render.
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That’s right. You can use different renderers. Cycles is tops for accuracy, looks incredible, huge overhead for rendering. Standard Blender render engine is history. No one uses it. Most needing faster rendering have moved to Evee, which is a realtime solution. It is imperfect but very fast and if you’re on a budget/timeline can often give good enough results if you know how to use it.
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Sorry for being late here!
If you want an example for the 3-Light Method take a look at my Hot-Tip B.O.L. mod! Don’t forget to look at the transmit value for the plastics!
If you ask me i would say go with a hybrid table that has the following stuff:
- Rendered shadow layer (from Blender) GI-ON and GI-OFF. There was a tutorial if i remember that right. @bord was that yours?
- Fluppers acrylic ramps (from his Blender ramp tutorial)
- Flupper domes if needed
- Rendered metal parts (perspective render textures from Blender) for bigger parts like metal ramps and those bars across the backwall
- VPX 2-Light method. Take my 3 lights and delete the middle one that creates the shadows. Make the small one a bit bigger to make up for it.
- Use 2 or 4 materials for every material you want to show on the table: GI-ON in bright area; GI-ON in dark/shadow area and maybe the same for GI-OFF (f.e. the peg posts in Vector, but i only used two material brightness levels back then)
The reason i recommend the hybrid methos is, i got a new gaming PC and imported my Vector table to see how the GTX 2080s performs and maybe do a graphics/physics update for the table. But after a few test renders i’m not sure if it’s worth it! The hybrid table looks solid and the increase in quality wouldn’t be too big.
As long as you do a quality 3D/layout work in Blender you’re absolutely fine with the hybrid table! And you can always add more rendered stuff to the table if you want! And it saves you 50% of your time!
Just my 2 cents!
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IIRC this method only worked for the Blender stock renderer, not Cycles. Never went back and tried it since I needed Cycles lights for other stuff I wanted to do on my projects. The effect is nice, though.
You should be able to duplicate a light by selecting it and pressing shift+d.
And you can select all lights at once, hit ctrl+L and select “Object Data”. Now all of your lights sare the same values. You only have to change the brightness, colour aso. once and it will be applied to all!
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