Lesson 6

By: Deathbliss

Deathbliss

Basic lighting, sounds, and decoration:

Walkways hanging in the air aren't that cool are they? Nor is lighting coming from nowhere, and neither are lifts, doors, etc. without sound. Well it's Christmas as I start this, our tree is empty and so is my heart (at least of Christmas Spirit) at the moment, it's 3:00 AM and while I am tired I just don't want to sleep. So bear with me as I put up the next in my small series of Lessons we have been working on together. I am curious to just how I am doing, and would like to put in a survey sooner or later. First things first - we need to open up the last save of the map you have been working on with me (lesson 5). Then we need some pillars in our Pool Room. So RIGHT CLICK on the BUILD A CYLINDER button and set as below: Now I have to apologize, I usually use another paint program to get these images included, the first 4 lessons were done with Jasc Paint Shop Pro but my 30 day trial expired - so now I use Microsoft Paint. I'll improve this later if I can. Place the RED BRUSH in the center of the room with plenty of space around it. If you are using a "builder room" you can move the RED BRUSH inside and follow along from there if you'd rather. Now load up the texture pack you're going to use - I'm using ANCIENT.UTX. DE-SELECT ALL, select your texture, and ADD the RED BRUSH. I used PILLAR/COLUMN 4 for all sides, and BASE/STONETSTH for the top and bottom. Now build another cylinder following the settings below:

Align it's bottom line exactly with the top line of the pillar. REBUILD to ADD another cylinder, but this time under OUTER RADIUS set it to just 50, and align it the same way on top of the last cylinder. When you are finished it should be similar to the pic above. To get all this accurate I have placed the little red + sign of the first, second, and third cylinders all on the same dark gray grid intersection point. Now RESET the RED BRUSH and completely surround the pillar without touching anything. I just built a cube 256+16, 100+16, 100+16. Did you notice something in those numbers? Yes a cylinder needs to be only half that of a cube of the same dimensions. For example our walkways were built 100 wide. To fit a cube pillar underneath we would need a 100 WIDTH/BREADTH cube. A cylinder only needs to be 50 to be exactly the same size. REMEMBER THIS! Also the + and - in the PROPERTIES for the cylinders we are making are used to make the building processes easier. If you for instance wanted a cylinder 256, 50, 50 then wanted the cap to be about 8 units bigger you just add 8 to the number for OUTER RADIUS. Hence 256, 50+8, 50. By the way, the INNER RADIUS always needs to be smaller than the OUTER RADIUS. Is your RED BRUSH surrounding the pillar and not touching anything? Good then INTERSECT it. Now EXPORT the BRUSH to the folder you made last tutorial with the T3D files inside, and name it something like POOLPILLAR. ADD the RED BRUSH which is now shaped as your pillar to each corner of the Pool Room, centered in each corner and with the underside of the upper walkway and the Pool Room floor. DELETE the original pillar (the one you INTERSECTED), RESET the RED BRUSH, and finally REBUILD and SAVE. Here is what mine looks like (don't worry about the missing water and portal sheet, I took the picture outside the Pool Room so you get the whole effect):

Feel free to play the level and look around. Ok, finally after 2 weeks or so I'm back, and I've decided to finish up with the sounds and lighting. It's January 13th as I finish this, and we now have TELEPORTERS instead of portals in our level. In the next tutorial we'll cover the FLOOR LOFTER and advanced water. Hope you'll be ready! Anyhow, lights - well let me play around a second. Ok, it seems you can't texture something and turn it into a light (which is what I was hoping for) so we'll adopt a little of Wolf's method and add my own flare, Build a cylinder set as you see below, and go through the usual process of finding a texture you like. I am using STONTSTC for this piece of geometry.

Next we'll build a cube and set it like the pic above. I have positioned the cube at the very center of the world (marked by a dark gray circle if you look closely in the grid views) with the cylinder just underneath. I'll be using the same textures as the pillar we just created, and under SURFACE PROPERTIES/EFFECTS I will have HIGH SHADOW DETAIL checked. BUILD the cube, and then make another to the following specs:

You notice how it's perfectly centered and sticking out a little. The idea here is to create a cage that the flame will go into. SUBTRACT it here, then rotate and do it on the other 2 sides as well. Once this is done be sure to place the cage on top of the cylinder - centered with the bottom of the cage and the top of the pillar touching and overlapping each other. When you are finished create a cube big enough so that the entire RED BRUSH surrounds our soon-to-be lighting fixture, INTERSECT it, go up to BRUSH/EXPORT and call it something creative like LIGHTPOST, RE-BUILD and save. This is what mine looks like when done - notice I have placed mine around the level where I wanted them - you should do the same. Wherever you want light, place them there. Yes, I know there is nothing in there yet - that comes next.

Normally you'd do the geometry for your light and add the light source and then sprinkle them along your level. Since this level is small and I am having trouble thinking I'm doing it this way. However, feel free to do this the way you want if you are confident you can. I'm just a guidebook - you can skip a few things if you already know them. Ok, the light fixtures are as ugly as hell. Oh well, they'll suit the purpose for now. Now go into CLASSES and click on the little - next to LIGHT. Select TORCHFLAME and ADD it inside on of the light fixture cages. Whoops! Little big huh? RIGHT CLICK on the TORCHFLAME and under DISPLAY set the DRAWSCALE to 0.120000. Now your flame will fit perfectly. Next you may want to fool around with the brightness, and type of lighting until you get an effect you like. Here I am taking you off the leash, so to speak. My brightness is at 64 along with the VOLUME BRIGHTNESS, RADIUS, VOLUME RADIUS, etc. I am going to increase the ability to see it further away as well if I can. The map as always will be downloadable from the link UnrealED Exordium listed below. Well now we have a few sounds to add to our MOVERS and lighting fixtures don't we? Right click on one of the TORCHFLAMES and then SELECT ALL TORCH FLAME ACTORS. Go to TORCH FLAME PROPERTIES and then find SOUND in the menu. Open up the SOUNDFX BROWSER and LOAD AMBANCIENT from the list. Under looping find the various flame sounds. I am using AFIRE and suggest you do the same. Once selected go back to the SOUNDS menu in the TORCHFLAME PROPERTIES and find AMBIENT SOUND. Click on USE and now AMBIENT SOUND should have Sound'AmbAncient.Looping.afire5' in the box next to it. Click on the little joystick icon in the 3D-VIEW and get near on of the flames to hear it. Seemed a little high and loud to me so I went into the SOUND menu and set the PITCH to 48, the RADIUS to 16, but I kept the VOLUME at 128. Add these flames all over your level in the little holders we made and take a look around. I also deleted all my lights - I am using just the torch flames for now. It fits what I want the level to feel like except the floor needs to be lit better. So how do we add sound to the mover? Well check out this pic:

You just open up DOORSANC in the SOUNDFX browser and find some sounds that you want for the various positions of the doors, and afterwards you need to do the same to the lift in the Pool Room. I'm going to cut this short and taking a break - here I will leave you to your own creative devices. Also as I state in each tutorial, you can e-mail me if you need any help, or download the example map to see for yourself. By the way, I also added some music to the level, the name of the level and my name (the author's name). I'll show you how later - see you at lesson 7 soon.