Night Vertex Colors

[mickarrow]

Does anyone know how the day - night vertex color lighting works?

I was playing around with MEd and I noticed that a casino in SF used 3 dff's.

For example : building.dff, building_dy.dff, building_nt.dff.

Now I believed the day and night dff was for timed objects ( like in VC) So that leaves only 1 dff. I opened that dff in Max, and it shows a daytime model. So where does the night vertex lighting comes into play? Is it stored in the col? Or in the 'building_nt.dff' (wich btw, I can't open with Kam's scripts).

 

[tonywob]

The NightVertex colours are embedded inside SA .DFF models. Most models include both day and night colours.

[Kam]

Actually, didn't anyone know are these models with Night Vertex Colors light-on in a particular time or just random?

[mickarrow]

Great . I was wondering wheter to put this in the 'MEd topic' or the 'Max scripts topic'.

 

I checked in MEd and there the night colours show up at 19.00

So, if it's defined in a single dff, that both has night and day vertex colours, how does the game now, when to load wich one? Or better yet, how do you export such a dff?

@ Kam: could the reason why I can't open the building_nt.dff be that it has a sort of time indication somewhere?

[tonywob]

At a guess, the night vertex colours come on as soon as it gets dark. There doesn't seem to be any setting in the DFF file that dictates this.

 

The 2DFX entries in the DFF file have a control setting and a time on/off value.

 

I set my editor to simply use night vertex colours when you set the time to night

 

[Kam]

 

I checked in MEd and there the night colours show up at 19.00

I mean ingame, are all those dffs with NVC light-up at the same time?

 

 

So, if it's defined in a single dff, that both has night and day vertex colours, how does the game now, when to load wich one? Or better yet, how do you export such a dff?

This is the question I want to know! Night Vertex Color is a special section in dff. And I guess the first 4byte unknown value related to time control?

 

 

@ Kam: could the reason why I can't open the building_nt.dff be that it has a  sort of time indication somewhere?

I don't know, you can send me the file if you want!

 

PS: I can import NVC into max by hand, but since max didn't allow maxscript control two vertex color, so I didn't implant this into my importer! But export is possible, if I know the timing control and/or the first 4byte unknown!...

 

 

 

The 2DFX entries in the DFF file have a control setting and a time on/off value.

Does it mean that you know the entire format of 2dfx inside the dff? Could you share it with me?

Edited December 15, 2005 by Kam

[mickarrow]

I went to look in SF when exactly NVC showed up. As you can see in the pics below, the models gradually change from daytime lighting to nightime.

 

In the first pic the borders of the roof of the chinese pagoda are brown-grey. In the second one they're still brown, but a lot brighter. And in the third pic they're clearly white.

 

 

 

 

The same goes for the palm tree.

 

So, no sudden changes. But can it be that a singe dff has the same model with two types of lighting. Wouldn't the game need two seperate dff's?