Anyone know of a good lamp tutorial

ilovescampers · March 2016

Hi. I posted this question in other places, but I thought I'd try my luck here. I have an idea for a lamp but I don't really know how to do it. The meshing part I can do. Textures involving Photoshop, I can do. But getting the lamp to behave like a lamp, I don't know how to do. I think it involves vertex paint and shaders...and that's about it.

Sasquatch_01 · April 2016

When I saw the title I thought you were asking for assistance with a scripting/engineering project...

ilovescampers · April 2016

Nope. I'm just confused about what I have to do with a mesh to make it turn on and off and shed light like a lamp. All I know so far is that it has something to do with vertex paint and something called "phong." On a side note, what kind of idiot comes up with these names?

ilovescampers · April 2016

Plum. Lol. The forum changed the word I used to "plum." I used a word that means someone of low intelligence, and the forum substituted the word, "plum." Silly, silly EA forum.

Edit: I went into my post above to correct a misspelled word and the forum changed the word "plum" back to "idiot." Now, if the word "idiot" is substituted in this post then I am going go to bed and give up on trying to communicate. Erg.

_orangemittens_ · April 2016

Hi @ilovescampers, making a lamp is not that much different than making any other item especially if you clone a lamp as your base object to work with. This will give your item the properties the lamp has so you won't need to add a light resource or code that allows it to be turned on and off in the game. As long as you put your light's bulb in roughly the same place as the original light's bulb you won't need to edit the light resource to position it. If you want your bulb in a much different location than the original you can edit the light resource in Studio's Warehouse tab.

Vertex paint does not need to be applied in order for your lamp to work but it does enhance the in-game appearance of a lamp item if you do use it. Sims 4 lamps use vertex paint to tell the game what part of the lamp mesh should brighten when the light is turned on and how much it should brighten by. For example, here is an EA lamp with vertex paint displayed on it in Blender:

The areas that are white will light up more than the areas that are grey when the light is turned on in the game. This increases the impression of the item being a lamp by making it look more like a real lamp does when you turn it on...the lampshade is affected by the bulb's light more than the base is. Again, though, you do not have to vertex paint your lamp to make it have a light that turns on and off because the light that is emitted from the lamp comes from the light resource not the vertex paint.

Phong is a technical term that describes a certain method of surface shading in 3D computer graphics. In the Sims 4 it is a shader that is used on many items but you won't have to tinker with shaders for a standard lamp project. The key is to clone a lamp that is similar to the one you want to make...then your new project will have all the properties you need to get started.

ilovescampers · April 2016

Thank you, Orangemittens, this really helps!

_orangemittens_ · April 2016

Hi @ilovescampers, you're welcome.

Also, I've written a new, fully illustrated tutorial specifically on the topic of how to make a new lamp that goes over how to vertex paint your mesh and edit the Light resource if you want to alter the lighting from the original clone. I posted it at Studio forums HERE yesterday.

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Anyone know of a good lamp tutorial

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