[Archived - RickEros] How do you set/calibrate the "shine" light?

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Posted by “RickEros” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

I derived and developed a room with new textures and normal maps. I put reflectivity on the textures to see how it works, but nothing. I put IMVU+ items I know to have shine, but nothing in this room, like it's all on Classic.

 

Then I took a look at the room in Desktop Beta...no shine. Same thing with IMVU+ items I have in the room.

 

NOW...I was working on something else in Studio, and I pulled up this room in Decoration mode. Now I see a green light shine on everything. I only see it in there, but not in Beta or when I edit the room itself in Studio.

 

How can I see the shine in Studio and Beta...and how I can control the color, so it's not a green light?

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “RickEros” on March 01, 2022.

[Archived]

OK....I STAND CORRECTED...and wow.

 

Bonkolina, the creator of the mesh I used, suggested a piece of furniture might be emanating the green light. So I opened my room up and put the "IMVU+" bar back in, and saw the green. Using decorate in Beta, I removed items one at a time...when I got to these signs I made for myself and friends...the green vanished.

 

hiResSnapshot1 

I did not know furniture could emanate light like that. I'll investigate if I can fix those signs, or dump them and find a new derivable to create from. Astounding.

 

So to repeat...it's NOT the room, but those signs. I had my 606 sign in the other rooms I would see the green in as well. I still look forward to that new feature, but also happy we can use legacy rooms and it's NOT some defect.

 

Thank you all again for your help!

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “RickEros” on March 01, 2022.

[Archived]

Wow....I heard back from the creator. Even thanked her for getting back to me since I feel like most of the time I can't seem to reach any of them.

 

She told me the mesh was...12 years old...wow. Didn't know that. She told me the lighting was never green, and even said what the environment should be, which it matched.

 

I'm just curious if this is the case it's an old mesh with likely an old 3D encoding (I mean, software changes...so a PSD from 12 years ago might have issues if I open it now in Photoshop)...so I think the best bet is to leave my room in "Classic" and wait til this new feature comes.

 

Thanks everyone for chiming in. I'm ultimately curious how old many of the rooms and items we're building from are...and also thinking I should try learning 3D modeling.

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “RickEros” on March 01, 2022.

[Archived]

@Drosselmeyer​ First off, thank you for the response. I always appreciate IMVU staff or helpers and even colleagues trying to sort this all out.

 

The unfortunate reality is then it's on the creator who made the room I derived from. I'll try to reach out and see if he/she will edit/update the room to fix this, but I won't hold my breath. This comes from reaching out to creators in the past about things like this, and they either never respond, or set their accounts so only friends can message them...thus I can't message them at all.

 

My ambient color is 200/200/200, and thus the green is from the creator's upload. I have a feeling he/she just let it be because this wasn't a factor in the past. I'll try to message and let them know, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

For now, because this room I made is mainly for my friends and I to use, I just removed all the normal maps and made it "IMVU Classic". I also put in a bar and DJ booth that isn't IMVU+, just so it also doesn't shine green. I can live with this for now, as I have normal maps made for it all.

 

If the creator won't fix the room, then I'll wait for those new features and be thrilled in trying them. Thank you again for letting me know. I'm also thrilled because that new feature would be the option I'd do...plus it means we as creators can color the illumination in these rooms.

 

Amazing stuff. Keep it up!

 

 

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “Drosselmeyer” on March 01, 2022.

[Archived]

@RickEros​ There is not default room light color. The color of the lighting in rooms is driven by 1) the ambient color of the room product and 2) any lights that were included in the import when the room product was created. The ambient color is set in the 'Environment' panel of the room product.

Room_AmbientThere are, however, other ways lighting can be affected:

  • Avatar(s) in the room wearing "light" products
  • Furniture in the room that have lights
  • Materials with 'Use Vertex Color' enabled (the mesh assigned the material will include the color of the vertices)
  • Materials with 'Self-Illuminate' enabled. This does not actually "illuminate" or emit any light, but makes the material not respond to any light. It is really "full bright" and causes the material to render the diffuse map at 100% of the pixel values.

 

For shine (and normal) to work best:

  • There must be lights. In the room product, furniture or avatar wearables.
    • These lights should be turned down. 50% value or less is good starting point.
      • Lights that are too bright will blow out shininess.
    • Multiple lights combine increase the brightness on the scene.
      • There can be many lights in a scene, but only 15 will affect any single mesh/material at one time.
      • IMPORTANT: More lights adversely affect rendering performance so use lights judiciously!
  • Ambient must be very low otherwise the shine will get washed out. I would suggest values less than 25%. Let the lights do the work of illuminating the scene.

 

We have a future plan to allow users to access the lights in a product in Studio, but as of right now the only way to set lights (or to know their values) is when they are authored in your 3d modeling application prior to import.

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “RickEros” on February 28, 2022.

[Archived]

Well, I tossed a message up on the beta testing chat to bring up this issue. In the meantime, I literally killed things in that room to get rid of the green. All the textures in the room are self-illuminating, and I have no IMVU+ items in there. People who come in with IMVU+ items on still see green on themselves, and I'm even considering killing all the normal maps and make the room work "classic" until a fix comes out.

 

My bigger concern is if this becomes the normal (as I said, this isn't the first room I've seen this green in), then it will render tons of older rooms as useless unless you do not use any IMVU+ items. Not to mention how many derivables become useless. We can't stop a regular user from buying an older room, decorating, and then wondering why there is a green light all over.

 

I think if IMVU wants to move forward with all this, then they should build contingencies for the vast amount of legacy rooms many might use to create from or purchase, and make sure they work in some palatable way in the new system.

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “jazzKat” on February 26, 2022.

[Archived]

The default basecolour of meshes is white, or 'null', if not set. The problem here is this... If what you said was the cause, the effect should have been visible when I checked the derivable as that data is baked in... it would appear regardless.

It didn't, so that means something else is going on aside from that and/or vertex colouring (the room doesn't have any, it's all shaded textures).​

Would need to see the other items but my guess is a rendering issue when normal maps are used in ambient lit rooms (although I would have seen that also but didn't).

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “LestatDeLioncourt” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

Exactly what I said above :) Aren't meshers supposed to apply the base color on the mesh before exporting? I know when mesh is made from 3d Max or Sketchup, if the materials are not set to neutral before exporting they will definitely have an effect on the Materials Derivers apply. This is especially true when Vertex is applied. I would imagine there are other Material effects that are influenced by the non-neutral material mapped mesh.

 

Neutral Material Setting as a base for other's materials, is best practice. Many meshers forget or don't know. In the manner of Mesh Export; with Neutral Material attribute, no matter what material Hue, Saturation, etc the Deriver uses, the base material within the mesh has no effect.

 

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “jazzKat” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

Drop the PID's for some of those items as they shouldn't be doing anything as the renderer default is null without input.

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “RickEros” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

I have a feeling that "green" is a default setting with the IMVU render. I notice when my IMVU+ furniture is in other rooms, I see green on them as well. I have one room made IMVU+ by the creator and the shine is white...which tells me the original creator of the derivable made his/her lighting white.

 

Maybe I could suggest to IMVU someplace they change that default setting to white? or a medium gray? It'll make all the legacy rooms useful. That, or disable it completely if there's no spot lights in the room...if possible.

 

Even better would be to tie it into the ambient light. ANYWAY...I changed all my textures, and I notice it takes a few hours for the change to take effect. I'll be ok for now...but it's something to consider.

 

I'll toss the comment into the Beta chat so their devs know the issue.

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “jazzKat” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

The room's entirely illuminated using ambient light which means normal maps nor shininess won't work as they need an actual light source (which ambient isn't). Can't open your room to see what's going on unfortunately.

 

image_2022-02-25_171433

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “RickEros” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

@jazzKat​ 

 

My room: 58401295

 

The Derivable: 6367077

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “jazzKat” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

What's the product ID?

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “RickEros” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

This room I derived from is NOT IMVU+ From looking around online, it looks as if the lighting/illumination is set in the 3D program when you mesh the room. If this is the case, then I'm going to kill the reflectivity to kill that green light.

 

Sucks we can't change the color in Studio, but that's the breaks I guess. Here's what's going on now. I have the door at self-illuminate.

 

I have to say though this is going to be a pain on those who put shiny maps in items if so many legacy rooms have this green lighting...not the first time I've encountered this with some items I've made.hiressnap

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “RickEros” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

@jazzKat​ I do not see "Lights" in the eyeball icon.lights

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “RickEros” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

I'll take a look. ​

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “jazzKat” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

@RickEros​ Did you mean 'illumination' rather than 'shine' (shininess)? Following on from @LestatDeLioncourt​ click the eyeball icon in Studio and enable Lights to double-check the colour tinting is due to an actual light source, then go from there as needed.

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “LestatDeLioncourt” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

Double check Vertex Color is Off. The same with Self-illuminate. Also, some rooms do not have the proper light to reflect (ambient vs. spot). Just things check that may help...

 

As always, the best place for product support or derive support is from the Creator who made the derivable.

 

I hope something helps...

 

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Community posted 2 months ago Admin

Posted by “RickEros” on February 25, 2022.

[Archived]

Some images... Here's when I edit the room in Studio.Editing a room in IMVU Studio 

Here's when I'm editing another item in Studio, and pull up the room in decoration mode.

Editing an item in IMVU Studio, using the room in decoration mode. 

Here's when I pull up the room in Desktop Beta.

The room in Desktop Beta

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