Nightwindow Textures

[AndisArt 2,067]

I've looked for a place in the forum where to find and exchange nightwindow textures for use in 3DS Max, but only have come across the ones posted by bixel on the STEX.

So I thought why not have a thread where we can all share our nightwindow textures.

Here are the ones I got so far:

[JakeMD 107]

Hello

There is some great textures that you can grab, here.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Here's the one that I've been using for a while now. 

[Gn_leugim 853]

Originally posted by: swat-medic

Hello

There is some great textures that you can grab, here.

quote>

quite nice not just for nite textures, but also for day lite textures, with proper treatment in PS

[marcoheutink 70]

very interesting, thanks for this! I'll need textures like these in my next bat!

[SimFox 802]

well technically this isn't a texture, just a photo of the Naberezhnaja(Embankment tower) in Moscow at night. But with a bit of work it should be possible to get a decent texture out of all those windows.

BTW, it's also shows a distribution of the lights in an office building... Notice how entire floors (by and large) are light up, not just individual windows. Another thing to notice is that due to different lighting system used by various tenants, as well as interior decisions made (like color schemes), the lights also is tinted in different way. It is an extra work, no doubt but could be nice. BTW Jason has actually introduce such variations in his texture...

[psander5 195]

That's a great illustration SimFox, and very useful. It also shows how some of the spaces are dimly lit, with no activity.

I have no night window textures to share, since I've never used any. I'll find this thread useful though when I finally arrive at that point though

[JakeMD 107]

Originally posted by: SimFox

well technically this isn't a texture, just a photo of the Naberezhnaja(Embankment tower) in Moscow at night. But with a bit of work it should be possible to get a decent texture out of all those windows.

BTW, it's also shows a distribution of the lights in an office building... Notice how entire floors (by and large) are light up, not just individual windows. Another thing to notice is that due to different lighting system used by various tenants, as well as interior decisions made (like color schemes), the lights also is tinted in different way. It is an extra work, no doubt but could be nice. BTW Jason has actually introduce such variations in his texture...

quote>

It also has the shades... Now, would it be better to model said shades? Or leave them on the textures. . And what method should be used to model them? Spline, box, etc.

[AndisArt 2,067]

Swat, great link, thanks!!

SimFox, you're absolutely right and nice example!

[JakeMD 107]

Hay, thanks

Also, for projecting reflections from buildings in gmax and 3ds max, images like these can be useful.

Just keep in mind--Anything that isn't black (0,0,0) will show. 

[Amthaak 1,501]

Here some windows nightlight textures I used for my Bats like brickell 500 and Brickell on the river (Gmax). They were made with Paint Shop Pro. 

[bixel 1,223]

I've just been using the Maxis default textures that have been shopped into different textures.

[JakeMD 107]

What do you mean Bixel?

[SimFox 802]

Swat:

yeah, blinds are important visual element, and there are different ways to realize them.
 

Selection of the most appropriate is a personal choice, however there are some broad principles that could be used to guide such a choice.
 

First of all it, naturally, depends on the way you make your windows’ glass. If it opaque (possibly textured) plane than there is, simply put, no choice here – blinds could only be textured in. I believe this is what our BAT machine Bixel had referred in his message.
 

If, on the other hand you decide to go with transparent glass you do have a choice. You can either model blinds and put them behind the glass, or you can make them as a texture with opacity map – part where blinds are is opaque and whatever color you’ve chosen, while the rest is transparent.
 

Creteria for above choice should probably be a topic of another discussion, so here I prefer to stay with blinds themselves.
 

Let’s suppose you have decided to go with modeled blinds. This choice at the expense of some work offer degree of depth to what otherwise may be flat and uninteresting wall. How to model them is, again, separate topic to the nightliting as such, suffice to say that they should be planes not boxes –depth is quite irrelevant here. What is relevant and very important, particularly at night is choice of material for blinds.
 

At this point you still can go for texture for night view, however it wouldn’t look consistent with unlit portion. Plus in case of large windows it will never look as good as proper see through solution, will never have the depth to it. This is particularly obvious on curved walls, or when seen at the angle.
 

All this could be avoided with lighting interior. In this, imho, optimal situation the topic of material for the blinds gains crucial importance.
 

Material can be opaque – no light getting through (like concrete), transparent -. light is passing through the material, but doesn’t affect it (like glass), or translucent – light while passing through material interacts with it resulting in material glowing/emitting light from its surface opposite of the light source (like a typical light shade, blind etc.)
 

Now I must stress that this classification of material is for CGI – computer generated images.
 

OK, here are illustration of what all those definition meant on practice, as saying goes a picture’s worth a thousand words. Test scene is made of number of boxes with front side removed. Neutral gray material applied to boxes and front openings partially covered with “blind” made of a plain. Inside boxes are lit with a point omni area light with inverse square decay – just as in real world – intensity (brightness) of the light diminishes by the square of the distance from the light. So light at 2 meters away is only ¼ as bright as at the source. The only difference between renderings is a type of material applied to the blinds planes. At all instances this material has this color:


 

Opaque material:

rendrtime 0min 55 sec.

Although such blinds may exist, they don’t look very natural (away from a war zone) or appealing.

 

Transparent material (transparency is set at 30%):

rendertime 2min 06sec.

This imho looks plain odd and wrong – no blinds like that actually exist, unless they are made of glass, but then what’s a point of them anyway. Clearly this is simply put unacceptable look. Light is passing strait through simply being uniformly deemed .
 

We could try to “fix” this by thinking along these lines - blinds don’t simply make things behind them darker, thy make it less clear, less defined. So can we we apply this to transparency. Yes we can. By reducing Glossiness in transparency settings we can get light rays parsing through the material to bend. this will result in a blurring effect:

render time 2ming 19 sec. glossiness at 0.5 (glossy samples at
 

We seem to be getting there. But still there is way too much definition in the interior as seen through blinds. Let’s turn glossiness all the way down to 0:

Render time 4min 11 sec. glossiness at 0 (glossy samples at .
 

As far as overall effect it looks right. But there are some issues, first of all blinds appear to be white as our light. Yet we know that they shouldn’t be since they are yellow. How come? Well because we actually don’t see them… It may sound odd, but bare with me: Our blinds yellow – that is a surface color. we see such color when it is illuminated by light. What do we have in our scene. light illuminates the surface of the blinds that face inside of our boxes. But we don’t see that side. Wee see the side that faces out, yet this side is NOT illuminated. But hey, you may ask, when what the heck do we see? Blinds are clearly visible, and quite bright at that. Well we see the box interior behind them. Same as in illustration of transparent material. The only difference is that now this interior view is blurred, very, very blurred.  This blurred light is passing through the blinds without interacting with them…
 

Second problem is render time – now it is twice as when glossiness was 0.5 and more than 4 times as when it was 1.0
 

What we need is for light to interact with blinds as it does in real world, not simply stream through. And simulation of such interaction could be achieved with translucency setting. What it does is brightening side of the material opposite of one at which light shines. Amount of this brightening is dependent on the amount of light received on lit side and color could be set freely. If we turn all light received to translucency and set it color to same as surface color of the blinds we’ll get this:

render time 2min 12sec.

This looks right and it is twice as fast as 0 glossiness solution yet much more natural looking.

[JakeMD 107]

I got pretty close, but can't seem to figure out how to make it yellow in gmax..

[SimFox 802]

well, that's whole point... none of it possible in GMAX.

Full possibilities that I have shown would only be possible in Max versions 9 and newer (e.g. Max9, Max2008, 2009 and 2010)

For GMAX I would suggest to make blinds opaque. And may be, apply some self-illumination to fake translucency.

[marcoheutink 70]

I 'm kinda lost..

How should you put these textures on your building to make them appear at night and dissapear in daytime?

I read the tutorials on night lights around here but can't find any that use a single texture to display interior and not make it appear during day.

I tried making the daytime texture semi-transparent with a nitelite to make em shine through, but then at daytime, the night texture also shines through, and that's not what I had in mind

Or is this method only possible in 3ds?

[JakeMD 107]

Originally posted by: meurdoos

I 'm kinda lost..

How should you put these textures on your building to make them appear at night and dissapear in daytime?

I read the tutorials on night lights around here but can't find any that use a single texture to display interior and not make it appear during day.

I tried making the daytime texture semi-transparent with a nitelite to make em shine through, but then at daytime, the night texture also shines through, and that's not what I had in mind

Or is this method only possible in 3ds?quote>

I wrote a guide, in my BAT Thread

[marcoheutink 70]

many thanks!!

[inflatablegoo 2]

But where the heck do you download 3dsMAX? I haven't even used gmax yet, but people say MAX is much better! However, I'm not going to pay, and I want a free version. I just don't want to screw everything up and blow myself to hell and back by downloading stuff I don't know about. Help?

[madhatter106 3,903]

Originally posted by: inflatablegoo

But where the heck do you download 3dsMAX? I haven't even used gmax yet, but people say MAX is much better! However, I'm not going to pay, and I want a free version. I just don't want to screw everything up and blow myself to hell and back by downloading stuff I don't know about. Help? quote>

You buy 3dsMAX = pay for it.

You download gmax = free.

If you're "not going to pay," then you're looking at gmax. 

But like I said in another thread, it's not the tools, it's the use of those tools.  A monkey can sit down with an expensive set of oil paints on one side of the room, while Leonard DaVinci sits down with a crayon on the other side of the room.  My bet is that Leonardo is going to do something better with the crayon than the monkey ever will....

[SimFox 802]

I'd say with GMAX it is better to go self-illuminated materials way rather then actual lights. It will require a bit more export time (as one would need to export a day model first and then day/night second and manually move night FSH from second to first).

Also MAX sometimes could be had for real pittance! Check your school software offers! It may be a good idea not to buy but rather rent it (for 1 or 2 years). So that you'll not be stack with old version when new comes out.

[Timmystwin 201]

Gmax all the way, because its free. I can see the benefits of MAX though...

[carpenter7 59]

Hey guys,

i found these images online and thought they might be useful for windows. Also I made the light blue one from an image i found online and it is made to be tiled.

[tcx 170]

I found this thread at skyscrapercity.com that have pics of buildings at night and maybe they are useful to batters using 3dsmax for their nitelites.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1338404

an example:

[kellydale2003 2,276]

I found this thread at skyscrapercity.com that have pics of buildings at night and maybe they are useful to batters using 3dsmax for their nitelites.

http://www.skyscrape...d.php?t=1338404

an example:

Great job txc!!!

I just wanna post something for 3DS MAX users.

Ever notice how glass reflects the surrounded lights at night?

If you don't know what I mean.. notice the glass on these videos

Well here's what I light-up my ground plane with at Night!

Even before self-illuminating the windows I already have a great night effect!

So here it is;

I recommend tiling it a couple times if you got a tall building.

But here's the effect I got.

NOTE: I just photoshopped the Red out of the photo, and tuned down the blue.. Just too lazy to update

  Edited March 16, 2011 by kellydale2003