How to make an obect "Shine", light effects for Evening and Night

Hi folks, a question to those expirienced modders.

I've created my first 3D Object ever.. So far i'm happy with it but

How Can i make the Front faceplate with the markings on "Shine", the Yellow part should shine and it would be great if it can "flood" a lil bit and effect the surrounding area.

How can i do this?? Default and self_ilum are probably the wrong materials..:helpsmilie:

I would recommend looking into Skate's PBR guide on this. Basically, you want to set up spec maps for the object. A spec map reflects back brightness/contrast based on angle and amount of light casting over it.

I found this video to be generally useful in this case in knowing how to do it:

Basically, the white areas are what is going to reflect back, while black is not. Mixing the colours (like grey) will give different outputs. Imagine it like a slider. Just map the object material with this spec map and include textures into DCS; and it should work.

Hope I was able to help!

Thanks so far, the Video is pretty interesting, but do you have some other links how i can make a object "Shine" in the nightime/evening. I try to achieve something like this

..but still i don't know where to start. The Faceplate of my object is a plane object with a simple bmp.dds texture on it.. right now. Thanks

Add Omni Lights or Spot Lights in Max and Position them and adjust Brightness Color and Intensity.

Outdated But should still help.

Really looking forward to seeing this develop into a nice mod for the airfields

I'm also breaking my head over this... I have made a billboard that I want to light up at night, much like the taxi sign posted above. I've tried pointing a spotlight at it in 3ds max but there are a few issues I have with that. First of all even though I select and set the spotlight to be rectangular in max, it becomes circular in DCS, showing a bright circle on the center of the billboard and not illuminating the rest of it, secondly by pointing the light at the billboard, the illusion of having the billboard itself as the light source is gone.

Is there any way to fake this? Is self illumination a thing in DCS and how do fake lights work?

I'm also breaking my head over this... I have made a billboard that I want to light up at night, much like the taxi sign posted above. I've tried pointing a spotlight at it in 3ds max but there are a few issues I have with that. First of all even though I select and set the spotlight to be rectangular in max, it becomes circular in DCS, showing a bright circle on the center of the billboard and not illuminating the rest of it, secondly by pointing the light at the billboard, the illusion of having the billboard itself as the light source is gone.

 

Is there any way to fake this? Is self illumination a thing in DCS and how do fake lights work?

I just did a quick test and self-illumination does work.

Thanks for checking Holychocmilk, I just tried it again and now it works.