Light Casting/Reflectance

Help and Feedback Building Support
#1

Hello,

I guess I am wanting to know the more in-depth workings of lighting and objects associated with lighting.

I have this example of a traffic light with a tunnel visor that realistically should have the associated lens color (Red, Yellow, or Green) on the visor.

RobloxScreenShot20190623_185026714
RobloxScreenShot20190623_1850267141234Ă—659 112 KB

RobloxScreenShot20190623_185759984
RobloxScreenShot20190623_1857599841234Ă—659 606 KB

There is the end result of the light casting on the ground, but has anyone played around and thought logically/realistically about the environment they were lighting?

Here is further detail about what I am talking about:
GL%20Example
The light (even during the day) can be seen reflecting off of the visor.

4 Likes
#2

Personally, I would just make the traffic lights neon, create an invisible block with a SpotLight inserted in it, then change its color.

#3

Well, I have a lens decal from the BEPC lens pack, so it really wouldn’t work. I did try cranking the reflectance up on the visor itself, but it looked like a sci-fi light show with streaks of light. Sadly I think this speaks to how Roblox’s lighting is in need of further investment. I wouldn’t say improvement, because it has come a long way over the years.

#4

Roblox’s lighting system is not perfect yet and is always being improved. Technically, anything that has the dark color will absorb light. If you actually set the visor to a lighter colour, you might be able to see some of the green light reflectance.

In this picture, I have set the brick to have RGB color (50, 50, 50) because if I set it really black, you know what happens, all the light gets absorbed. The material I used for this one was smooth plastic, but it also works fine with metal. The part reflectance was 0.

ref
ref725Ă—510 263 KB

#5

RobloxScreenShot20190625_070227868
RobloxScreenShot20190625_0702278681234Ă—659 183 KB

Here’s an update:

I have played around with visor color and through in a part into my overall group for the green lens:
moreprogress

I was thinking I was going to be a clever human and adjust the ranges and brightnesses, but it didn’t turn out so well…

Would a lens flare texture work here? I am just trying to think outside this box I currently am in. At the moment the lenses (while off) look great IMO, but on, they look very flat and 2D.

P.S. What’s with light bleed? It’s been a thing for quite some time, I know when surface lights came out they addressed it in a video, but is it just the way the engine renders light currently?

1 Like
#6

With regards to that traffic light example, that effect is called specular highlights, and it’s in phase 3 of Future is Bright. It’s part of the reason why stuff in FIB looks realistic, but that does mean unfortunately it’s not available for production use yet.

#7

I have a lens decal from the BEPC lens pack, so it really wouldn’t work.

The example image is a circle. The only other things I can think of are arrows. These should both be fairly trivial to just sculpt with a part and make them neon, and it would then have the added effect of a glowing light!