My New Tutorial Series (1 Released)

[ThinBlueLineKY4]

Hey everyone. Recently, I decided I would make a few tutorial videos for some various aspects of modding. I hope these will help you all, and that you will find these useful. My main goal of putting these tutorials up is to spark creation in the community and that modders will take these skills and use them to make variants of models, change lighting, and more instead of just plain old reskins.

Completed Tutorials:

Basic Gold Leaf Lettering Tutorial- 1 Part; Will explain how to create basic (and relatively easy) gold leaf lettering on a texture.

Planned Tutorials:

Cab Swap Tutorial- 3 Parts; Part 1 will discuss how to swap a cab or a body. Part 2 will mainly discuss how to swap out the water pump model (some vehicles have a different water pump model that you might like more than the current water pump), with some references back to part 1. Part 3 will discuss resizing the cab or the body to make one or the other better scale-wise to the other.

Halogen Strobe Lighting Tutorial- 2 Parts; Part 1 will explain the basics to creating a single halogen strobe light, such as flash intensity, polygons, colors, and etc. Part 2 will discuss variants/looks/different types of flash patterns you can make using halogen strobe lighting. In other words, Part 2 will explain the basic flash pattern, and how to modify it on your on to get different looks/flash patterns, but keep the halogen strobe effect.

Possible Tutorials:

LED Lighting Tutorial-

Generic Lighting Tutorial- 1-2 Parts; Both parts, together, will explain how to make the basic lights on a vehicle such as headlights, brake lights, turn signals, marker lights, and etc.

Incandescent & LED Wig Wag Tutorial- 3 Parts; Part 1 will explain how to create incandescent wig wag lights. Part 2 will explain how to modify incandescent wig wag lights, such as whether the lights light up then immediately turns off once it reaches max brightness, or it stays at max brightness for a second or two before turning off. Part 3 will explain how to create LED wig wags.

Basic Mapping Tutorial-

Advanced Mapping Tutorial-

Please let me know what you think of the ideas for tutorials, and what you think of the tutorials themselves when they are published. Also feel free to tell me how they helped you (once released), I would love to know.

[itchboy]

Im willing to contribute to some lighting tutorials because Ive covered all three types of lighting (halo, strobe and led) in my modding. They have a each a distinct difference in color and flash.

Feel free to add to my other tutorials. I already have lightbar installation and UV map, the cab swap would round it off nicely.

[ThinBlueLineKY4]

10 minutes ago, itchboy said:

Im willing to contribute to some lighting tutorials because Ive covered all three types of lighting (halo, strobe and led) in my modding. They have a each a distinct difference in color and flash.

Feel free to add to my other tutorials. I already have lightbar installation and UV map, the cab swap would round it off nicely.

ah I could use some rotator tutorials to add here. I know modern strobe is a bright and quick led flash, but halogen strobe i was referring to the older non-led strobe lights like those seen at 0:41 in this video. like the older strobes they had a natural very light blue/white color, so you put a lens on top to make them red. but i might be getting my light type names mixed up. am I?

 

Edited December 22, 2016 by Connor Brumleve

[itchboy]

My contribution here:

Rotator at its simplest is just two lights plopped together. One is the slow warm flash, the other is an intense blink which simulates the rotator facing the viewer. Rotators are almost always halogen, with exception to the newest FS Vision lightbar which is an LED light put on a rotating mount. Rotators can be set between 3.3 - 4.0 flash freq. The warm slow flash is usually .30 in intensity, while the intense blink has to be .98 or .99 so that it doesnt bleed into the slower flash.

---

To clarify, Halogen, Strobe and LED are all different types of lighting. No such thing as 'halogen strobe'.

Halogen flashes with a 'build up' at a rate of about 3.0 to 3.3 ingame. I believe all real life emergency lighting has a certain range of flash freq because of some legal requirement so that it doesnt blind people or cause epilepsy. The intensity for halogen would be between 0.10 to 0.35. Any higher and it would look too instantaneous. Halo tends to have washed out colors that have lots of white to them because halogen bulbs only come in white with the color being provided by the lens on the ELS thing. Some halo flash patterns are unsync'd, others are.

Strobe is a very fast intense flash, same frequency as everyone else but set the intensity to 0.99. Another thing to note is that some strobe patterns are unsycn'd. It has a less washed out more intense color than halo, so use more color filled polygons over it. For anyone looking at real vehicles as reference, strobe has a weird property that digital cameras cannot pick them up correctly, often they look like this blinding flash on screen, or dont appear at all.

Here's an example of strobe (lightbar of truck at 21 seconds in the video).

LED is the modern common one seen in most EM vehicles since the early 2000's. I believe they switched to it because of cost of manufacturing plus the brightness. LED has all the fancy patterns, and is used on most of the popular lightbars and lights nowadays. It has very vibrant colors, but less instantaneous flash patterns than strobe. For Em4 purposes, you'd set it to the same flash pattern as halo/strobe, but the intensity would be between a range of .85 to .95 depending on the flash type you want. LED colors tend to go this way:

• Blue has a bit of purple in it, but not too much
• Red looks a little orange-ish
• Amber looks more yellowish
• White tends to have a blue-ish tint to it

Here is three minutes worth of lighting examples for this game. Shows a good mix of halogen, strobe and LED.

 

[ThinBlueLineKY4]

14 minutes ago, itchboy said:

My contribution here:

Rotator at its simplest is just two lights plopped together. One is the slow warm flash, the other is an intense blink which simulates the rotator facing the viewer. Rotators are almost always halogen, with exception to the newest FS Vision lightbar which is an LED light put on a rotating mount. Rotators can be set between 3.3 - 4.0 flash freq. The warm slow flash is usually .30 in intensity, while the intense blink has to be .98 or .99 so that it doesnt bleed into the slower flash.

 

---

To clarify, Halogen, Strobe and LED are all different types of lighting. No such thing as 'halogen strobe'.

Halogen flashes with a 'build up' at a rate of about 3.0 to 3.3 ingame. I believe all real life emergency lighting has a certain range of flash freq because of some legal requirement so that it doesnt blind people or cause epilepsy. The intensity for halogen would be between 0.10 to 0.35. Any higher and it would look too instantaneous. Halo tends to have washed out colors that have lots of white to them because halogen bulbs only come in white with the color being provided by the lens on the ELS thing. Some halo flash patterns are unsync'd, others are.

Strobe is a very fast intense flash, same frequency as everyone else but set the intensity to 0.99. Another thing to note is that some strobe patterns are unsycn'd. It has a less washed out more intense color than halo, so use more color filled polygons over it. For anyone looking at real vehicles as reference, strobe has a weird property that digital cameras cannot pick them up correctly, often they look like this blinding flash on screen, or dont appear at all.

Here's an example of strobe (at 21 seconds in the video).

LED is the modern common one seen in most EM vehicles since the early 2000's. I believe they switched to it because of cost of manufacturing plus the brightness. LED has all the fancy patterns, and is used on most of the popular lightbars and lights nowadays. It has very vibrant colors, but less instantaneous flash patterns than strobe. For Em4 purposes, you'd set it to the same flash pattern as halo/strobe, but the intensity would be between a range of .85 to .95 depending on the flash type you want. LED colors tend to go this way:

• Blue has a bit of purple in it, but not too much
• Red looks a little orange-ish
• Amber looks more yellowish
• White tends to have a blue-ish tint to it

You can see some halogen and LED examples in Em4 here:

 

thanks for the add! models look great in those videos.

[ThinBlueLineKY4]

Here is the gold leaf lettering tutorial everyone! 

 

[ThinBlueLineKY4]

On 12/22/2016 at 7:26 PM, itchboy said:

My contribution here:

Rotator at its simplest is just two lights plopped together. One is the slow warm flash, the other is an intense blink which simulates the rotator facing the viewer. Rotators are almost always halogen, with exception to the newest FS Vision lightbar which is an LED light put on a rotating mount. Rotators can be set between 3.3 - 4.0 flash freq. The warm slow flash is usually .30 in intensity, while the intense blink has to be .98 or .99 so that it doesnt bleed into the slower flash.

---

To clarify, Halogen, Strobe and LED are all different types of lighting. No such thing as 'halogen strobe'.

Halogen flashes with a 'build up' at a rate of about 3.0 to 3.3 ingame. I believe all real life emergency lighting has a certain range of flash freq because of some legal requirement so that it doesnt blind people or cause epilepsy. The intensity for halogen would be between 0.10 to 0.35. Any higher and it would look too instantaneous. Halo tends to have washed out colors that have lots of white to them because halogen bulbs only come in white with the color being provided by the lens on the ELS thing. Some halo flash patterns are unsync'd, others are.

Strobe is a very fast intense flash, same frequency as everyone else but set the intensity to 0.99. Another thing to note is that some strobe patterns are unsycn'd. It has a less washed out more intense color than halo, so use more color filled polygons over it. For anyone looking at real vehicles as reference, strobe has a weird property that digital cameras cannot pick them up correctly, often they look like this blinding flash on screen, or dont appear at all.

Here's an example of strobe (lightbar of truck at 21 seconds in the video).

LED is the modern common one seen in most EM vehicles since the early 2000's. I believe they switched to it because of cost of manufacturing plus the brightness. LED has all the fancy patterns, and is used on most of the popular lightbars and lights nowadays. It has very vibrant colors, but less instantaneous flash patterns than strobe. For Em4 purposes, you'd set it to the same flash pattern as halo/strobe, but the intensity would be between a range of .85 to .95 depending on the flash type you want. LED colors tend to go this way:

• Blue has a bit of purple in it, but not too much
• Red looks a little orange-ish
• Amber looks more yellowish
• White tends to have a blue-ish tint to it

You can see some halogen and LED examples in Em4 here:

 

i lighted some vehicles using your advice, but for 2 of the flash patterns i was going for one i had to slow down flash frequency and the other i had to increase it (led lights). ill tru to upload it to youtube then post links here soon. this actually is very clear and with very basic lighting knowledge anyone can use these to learn how to light. thanks for posting this.

Oh and itchboy what coronas do you tend to use more often for the various different types of lighting? Like the 4 door freightliner cab for Montana mod in that video you posted in the original comment. and lightmaps too. what do they even do and which ones do you use?

[C.F.D]

Here you can watch how I edit my lights in the editor, all of the coronas seen in the video, as well as ground radiation are custom made textures made by me :

 

[itchboy]

10 hours ago, Connor Brumleve said:

i lighted some vehicles using your advice, but for 2 of the flash patterns i was going for one i had to slow down flash frequency and the other i had to increase it (led lights). ill tru to upload it to youtube then post links here soon. this actually is very clear and with very basic lighting knowledge anyone can use these to learn how to light. thanks for posting this.

Oh and itchboy what coronas do you tend to use more often for the various different types of lighting? Like the 4 door freightliner cab for Montana mod in that video you posted in the original comment. and lightmaps too. what do they even do and which ones do you use?

Those coronas are the default coronas in the game, specifically 3_red and 3_blue. The key to getting good LED colors is to compliment them with a really intense white polygon.

Halogen has a more washed out color so the polygons on them are red/blue/whatever color mixed with a bit of white.

My white lights differ depending on light type. corona_bluelight is for the LED white, corona_11_white for halogen/strobe white.

[ThinBlueLineKY4]

On 2/21/2017 at 7:13 PM, itchboy said:

Those coronas are the default coronas in the game, specifically 3_red and 3_blue. The key to getting good LED colors is to compliment them with a really intense white polygon.

Halogen has a more washed out color so the polygons on them are red/blue/whatever color mixed with a bit of white.

My white lights differ depending on light type. corona_bluelight is for the LED white, corona_11_white for halogen/strobe white.

Ah okay. And is there some method to figuring out the numbers/percentages for the different values for the RGB for both corona and polygon? And if you use white polygons (without radiation) wouldnt the polygon show up as very white? I dont really know what colors polygons should be. I have always used 255,255,255 for white. I know this is getting into pretty deep specifics, but what values do you use for the different types of lightings or is their any methods or references (like vehicles in montana 2.0.1 which i have) that I could look at for a reference?

On 2/21/2017 at 7:01 PM, C.F.D said:

Here you can watch how I edit my lights in the editor, all of the coronas seen in the video, as well as ground radiation are custom made textures made by me :

and i like the flash pattern on the lightbar in this video. I wish i could get a similar flash pattern to that (saying that without watching video all the way through first) I will watch it more when I get home though. I just want to create very good looking lights that are realistic. I was able to create a realistic signal alert 90 flash pattern with offset/delay for a whelen edge freedom led bar with a (looking at very front not sides nor rear) red-empty-white-empty-red-empty-empty-red-empty-white-empty-red setup. With the offset/delay i added, it slowly/somewhat medium speed changes flash patterns (just like irl) and eventually ends back up at original pattern.

[ThinBlueLineKY4]

But yeah on a side note, I took the Arrow XT cab made by itchboy and modified it to be like a Pierce Enforcer cab. Here are some pics of what I have done with it so far. Deciding which mirrors I like better (big ones out front or ones on door). Which ones do you all like? I have started lighting it, and the front lower level emergency lighting is complete, and front side of lightbar is too. But I hate the flash pattern I got after I looked at what I did for the lightbar so I will probably end up redoing it. Also included is a short preview of the current lights/flash patterns on the truck (main purpose of the short preview is to show the grill lightbar's flash pattern).

Credits: Itchboy (cab), body, bumper, big mirrors, and a few misc things are from engine 2 from Mayberry (Bama i think would be the one there), i cant remember but i think itchboy's lightbar pack for the lightbars, Emergency-forums.de for the Whelen L31 LED warning beacons on the back (ill update with exact person soon), grill LED lightbar is the rear lightbar on the FDNY battalion GMC.

EDIT: video wont upload directly. Ill have to put it on youtube or some image/video hosting site.

 

[itchboy]

Your engine looks pretty good. Hopefully you did the 'cab swap tutorial' using that one. Some advice, those 'mini' side lightbars on the sides of the rig are wrong. You need to create a proper mini lightbar model instead of horizontally scaling down the model. It looks way compressed and the LED's look sandwiched.

Image below should explain what Im trying to describe. Whether its this tiny 3 LED one, or any of the incremental lengths they sell the thing in, you need to actually add/remove the inside LED parts, modify the outer lightbar case, and modify the texture to portray the different variants correctly.

Going back to lighting, well, the polygon color depends on the lighting type I'm doing, and also the corona I'm using.

[ThinBlueLineKY4]

15 hours ago, itchboy said:

Your engine looks pretty good. Hopefully you did the 'cab swap tutorial' using that one. Some advice, those 'mini' side lightbars on the sides of the rig are wrong. You need to create a proper mini lightbar model instead of horizontally scaling down the model. It looks way compressed and the LED's look sandwiched.

Image below should explain what Im trying to describe. Whether its this tiny 3 LED one, or any of the incremental lengths they sell the thing in, you need to actually add/remove the inside LED parts, modify the outer lightbar case, and modify the texture to portray the different variants correctly.

Going back to lighting, well, the polygon color depends on the lighting type I'm doing, and also the corona I'm using.

Yeah that'll was a smaller version that I actually didn't resize that came with the lightbar pack. Ive been looking for a smaller mini one like that. Though they dont make those anymore. The edge freedom IV minibar only comes with 2 center LEDs in addition to Corner LEDs now. Where did you find this one? And ive tried to modify it once, but it was a little hard and i was unsuccessful with it. I need to learn how to uv map/modify skins to the level you are talking about (i might be able to do that already idk) before I could probably do that.

[itchboy]

IIRC the lightbar package doesnt have the mini lightbars, or a good majority of what Ive made since.

They are easy enough to modify. Just make sure you separate the plastic casing, internal parts, and the mountings/brackets when you do. Makes things easier. You will have to guesstimate the length on the thing to be correct to the mini (or any other length variant like the Ultra or the NFPA ones) and then UV map accordingly.

[ThinBlueLineKY4]

On 2/24/2017 at 8:54 PM, itchboy said:

Your engine looks pretty good. Hopefully you did the 'cab swap tutorial' using that one. Some advice, those 'mini' side lightbars on the sides of the rig are wrong. You need to create a proper mini lightbar model instead of horizontally scaling down the model. It looks way compressed and the LED's look sandwiched.

Image below should explain what Im trying to describe. Whether its this tiny 3 LED one, or any of the incremental lengths they sell the thing in, you need to actually add/remove the inside LED parts, modify the outer lightbar case, and modify the texture to portray the different variants correctly.

Going back to lighting, well, the polygon color depends on the lighting type I'm doing, and also the corona I'm using.

Oh and fun fact, whelen doesnt make that 3 led version anymore. The smallest one they make know is 4 led.

[itchboy]

Didnt know. Must be one of those new gen lightbars they're doing. Same logic applies though no matter what brand you're covering. You gotta modify the model and any internals, then UV map the thing to be on scale, after you modify the texture.

[ThinBlueLineKY4]

17 hours ago, itchboy said:

Didnt know. Must be one of those new gen lightbars they're doing. Same logic applies though no matter what brand you're covering. You gotta modify the model and any internals, then UV map the thing to be on scale, after you modify the texture.

I think its jsut nfpa stuff that they have 4 now instead of 3 for the Whelen Edge Freedom IV.