SPOT LIGHT HELP

[eyein12]

So i was able to play around with the spot light blueprint last night. I applied a spot light blueprint to a street light to get some ground glow fx. it works fine, however when i place my object at its origin position, the spot light is under ground. if i raise the object a few meters the ground becomes more lit. what controls the height of the spot light glow. i notice that the floolight telgraph asset starts with the groundglow above ground.

my question is what influences the start position of the ground glow fro mthe spotlight blueprint? what controls it. should I make a taller street light and have 1/2 of it under the y-axis? so when i raise it i will get a nice ground glow?

under light compenet section in the spot light blueprint; radius, phi, and theta

what does phi, and theta control?

thanks

Ian

[Bananarama]

Are you attaching the spot as a child of the streetlight? If so, then it should remain in the position set within the asset editor. If you didn't use the asset editor to add as a child, then you'll need to create your own point light Blueprint and reference model - the model can be of any shape and size - it's only viewable in the editor - and keep your radius (set in the Blueprint) to just slightly larger than the distance from the light source to the ground.

what does phi, and theta control?

As I understand it, this refers to the full occlusion of light cast upon bodies from the light source (umbra - phi), and the partial occlusion of light cast upon bodies from the light source (penumbra - theta). A narrow cone of light , such as a focused beam from a flashlight or an intense light from far off (the sun), will cast a narrow and well-defined shadow edge (phi) with a broad Penumbra (theta) shadow area, where as a wide angle source, such as one cast from a lamp with a broad reflector or an intense light very close to the occluding body, will cast a broad and softer shadow edge (phi) and a narrow Penumbra (Theta) shadow.

In other words, the larger the umbra (phi), the softer the shadow's edge. According to RSC, the phi value in the Blueprint should be greater than or equal to theta.

A terrific guide on UKTS: http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 5&t=118573

Also keep in mind the color of the light's output. You can easily tweak the values to simulate Mercury and Sodium Vapor, Metal Halide, Tungsten, etc.

[eyein12]

yeah ive been playing with these values today. so basically I could attach a spotlight blueprint as a child to my main streetlight but i skipped it, I just created a spotlight BP and used my streetlight model as the reference, where the lightbulb glows on an addatex shader and the game casting the ground glow from the spotlight blueprint. for lights casted on buildings i just used a simple shape. But one thing how do you make the shape disappear when leaving the world editor? Liek you mentioned will a point light blueprint achieve this for me? otherwise im just gonna finish planting them as is and then change the shape to an invisible 1.

thanks marc.

[Bananarama]

The light model should only be viewable in the editors. I don't know if this makes a difference, but after looking at one of the Kuju default lights, I named mine the same > 1_0512_pointlight, and the material applied doesn't appear to make any difference (mine is a simple TexDiff).