I’ve created this set from scans of slides I made for the Kaffeine Krew (a projected effects group I was part of in the early ’90s) to add interest in otherwise unlit spaces in discos using slide projectors.  We’d load a carousel of slides into a projector and set it up well out of reach of punters and could then leave it running for hours on a slow auto change to add a little bit of variety.  The slides were originally made by photographing fabric and other things with bold patterns then photocopying the prints onto overhead transparency sheets which were then chopped up into appropriate sized rectangles and mounted in slides for use.  While some of the slides also had offcuts of coloured filters added to change the colour of the light we usually put a piece of coloured filter over the slide projector’s lens so the colour would remain constant.

I’ve a tutorial on using gels to add interest to Vue lighting in the works but I thought I’d start releasing the materials now because I’ve not finished the tutorial but I’ve loads of gels that I can release.  They are free for use in both commercial and none commercial work but please read the read me file for full copyright and other information.

Download: impworks_stripes.zip (17.5MB)

Switch Image Mapping (2k Zip Archive Released)

So tomorrow its away with the chainsaw and out with the pruning knife.

Vue doesn’t have a parallel light source that creates a fixed width beam so making search lights and other lights with parallel edges requires a little work. Here is one way I’ve used, it may not work for all situations but it works for some. All the values I give here are those I used to make the example picture (above).

We need to allow a light placed under the ground to shine through it. Select the ground in your scene. Select the material applied to the ground. In the Advanced Material Editor in Effects uncheck Cast Shadows. You’ll need to do this for any objects that might block the beam of light your going to create, so in my simple example above I had to uncheck it on the red material on the Cylinder too.

If you need these objects to have shadows in your picture you’ll have to create two renders (one with the light beam but without shadows and one without the light beam and with shadows) and then composite the two images.

We’re going to use a little geometry to make the beam look like it has parallel edges even though it doesn’t. Now create a spot light in Vue. Place it under the ground shining upwards at a Z position of -500m. Now set the spot lights spread to 0.25 degrees and its power to 500.

In the light editor enable volumetric lighting and increase the Intensity to 10 by typing it into the box.

Now when you render the picture you should get a beam of light shining from the ground with fairly parallel edges.

That will do for a lot of scenes but what if you need the light to appear to start from an object that can be seen under, like the crude example below?

The trick here is to use Variable colour in the light editor. Select the spot light and go into the light editor and select the Lighting tab. Now right click the color map and select Edit Color Map. Create a New keycolor at -1 and set it to black. Create another at -0.8 and set it to black. Create a third at around -0.6 and set it to white then drag the keycolor to the left so it is right up against the one at -0.8. Set the Key color at 1 to white too. Set the cut off distance to 5km. Now by tweaking the lights Z position move it till it appears to shine out of the object but not appear under it. In my example I put it at -480m.

You can also use these tricks to make headlights that shine from a car’s headlights that don’t start as unrealistic points or for street lamps.

I’ve posted a 200K Zip file with the two scenes in to get you started: vuesearchlight.zip

Put the finishing touches to the second in a series of article for Ragnarok earlier tonight. One of those times when looking over some old stuff you get a fresh look at it and realise what it was lacking. In this case it needed more villains, more humour and less high powered good guys. Hence why one 20 page article has spawned two eight page articles and left material for at least three more articles of a similar length.

Also knocked out a two page first draft of some Ravenloft ideas and sent them off to the Fraternity of Shadows.

On top of that the second of the two Pulp Guns books from SJ Games came out today. Yes these are game books for players of GURPS but they also include lots of handy details. Including a description of the flame thrower Dirk Dangerous uses in a story I’ve been writing. Which is handy because up until now all I’d been able to find out was it was a flamethrower that was combined with a sub machine gun. Every hero should have one.

I’ve almost finished Dirk Dangerous and the Giant Balls of Doom. I’ve been retooling some of my old Ravenloft adventures for a more recent version of D&D. I’ve been answering questions about Vue 6 Tutorial: Cloud Layer Sculpting. I completely failed to put a lighting rig together for Monday night. I’ve the first interview for the Vue News blog down to final edits. I was trying to make some materials for Vue that simulate a heat haze effect. I picked up a book on Shanghai to help me research the real world parts of NitS. Oh and to top it all off I’m back to learning C# development at work. I’m just glad it’s a bank holiday this week end – maybe I’ll catch up a bit.

A line from one character when friends of mine when playing the original Ravenloft adventure. I wasn’t actually there but I’ve heard it so often it almost feels like community property. I’d played the same scenario back in college so it made sense to me. Back on the 1st I said that I’d been tinkering with my old Ravenloft notes for no good reason. Except now it may not be so frivolous as I may have a couple of players for a game of D&D. Trust me to set that up a couple of months before 4th Edition hits the shops but at least I’ve plenty of material to fall back on and its not like 3rd Edition is a bad system.

So tonight I’ve been picking out a set of appropriate monsters I may use. Like picking a colour pallet for an illustration or a web site I find having a small set of monsters to work with gives a more satisying feel to a campaign than using any old monsters that take my fancy. The adventures end up with a stronger linking theme and can take on a more personal feel for the players. Not to say I won’t throw a monster from out of left field if I think the players have gotten into a habbit of dealing with a particular way. I think of it as the Boromir strategy after Shaun Beans’ great line in Lord of the Rings "They have a cave troll".

I’ve also been devising outlines for four villains. I always like to have four villains on hand. One will be thrown away pretty quickly when either I don’t like them or the players just don’t act like they are scary or villainous. One will probably be defeated early on to give them a false sense of hope and progress. One will appear to be bad but will get munched on by the other remaining villain. Which will leave the last one standing of the four: in Buffy Speak the Big Bad.

After a couple of years of writing more fiction than gaming I’d forgotten how much easier it is to put stuff for a game together. Anyway it looks like I’m going back to the castle and there is every chance it’s night.