How do I add night lighting to one face

[jgarnold]

I have modelled a fuel barge which has a lighted sign above it and the building fascia also is lit at night.
I used (MSFS devmode) Light Warm Medium to light up the lighted sign but the fascia is 'thin and long' (see image below with red arrow) making it near impossible to light using Light Warm Medium.
The fascia (a single face in blender) has an image as it's material.

How do I add lighting? I tried using 'emissive' (material) without success.

 

[GaryGB]

Hi John:

This is not a 'step-by-step guide' reply, but please tell us if the type of illuminated signs in this scenery are what you may wish to achieve:

https://flightsim.to/addon/88356/amboy-airfield-california

GaryGB

 

[jgarnold]

Not really what I wanted.

I want the entire length lighted similar to your second image ie the blue fascia of the motel reception building. I would not have thought lighting using 'spotlights' is the answer as it would take many of them.
I was thinking that using emissive is the answer but can't work out how to do that. The neon sign surely was done using emissive rather than lighting.

And hey I have visited Roy's at Amboy when we drove LA to Albuquerque along parts of the Route 66 and loved it. Looking through the windows of the motels' reception area was like going back to the 1950's.
Excellent modelling there. Well done.

Below is the (real) fuel barge at night. See how the fascia (blue) is lit up as if there are fluoro tubes along the edge BUT I don't care to cope that exactly just for the blue to light up at night.

 

[GaryGB]

I thought I would check Google to see if there might be an Aussie colloquialism for part of your statement above, lest I misinterpret what you meant:

"I don't care to cope that exactly"

This was Google AI's reply:

Google Search

What a world Google AI presumes to envision for itself; that it not only is / may some day be- 'conscious' (...and therefore "thinks"), but even is / may some day be able to- understand human psychology based on text strings submitted as a query.

This reminds me of Matt Damon's interview with a humanoid robot 'parole officer' in the movie "Elysium".

https://www.google.com/search?q=You...ate=ive&vld=cid:0ddb97e7,vid:LZb5WyIukOc,st:0


Right about now I am seeing Arnold Schwartznegger's character in the movie "Total Recall asserting his human response to a annoying 'Johnny Cab' humanoid robot.

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1cfkap0/total_recall_johnny_cab

And heaven forbid I become strangely compelled to go to 'electronic confession', in the hope a machine more intelligent than I am, might advise me on how to expiate my sins, like Robert Duvall's character in the movie THX 1138.

I could elaborate on this, but I "choose" not to, because (like Neo in the Matrix movie trilogy ?), I am a human with free will; and besides, I run on caffeine- not digital program code.

Anyway, I would be inclined to infer that you meant "I don't care to cope (with) that exactly".

I did indeed inspect both your image textured Blue fascia Chevron barge and various objects in the AM66 scenery, and see that at first glance one may conclude the Blue fascia was illuminated via one or more spotlights.

Upon close inspection, it was apparent that there are spotlights on the underside of the roof of the office building that 'might' be interpreted as lighting the Blue fascia if observed from a distance, but which in actuality project downwards.

To enable the gradients of color (from underlying fluorescent light tubes ?) in the Blue fascia of the Chevron fuel barge, I believe an image texture might be ideal, provided one is able to create it graphically and bake it, or use an Alpha channel in the image to impact run time rendering.

IIUC, the Cafe sign on the roof at the gas station is also an image texture Material which displays brighter at night, and merits exploration as a worked example of a night emissive object.

I think I shall study this scenery package further, via Arno's MCX and Patrick Germain's Airport2Project.

GaryGB

 

[jgarnold]

What have I done to you.
A BIG typo
Should have been - I don't care to copy that exactly just for the blue to light up at night.

 

[GaryGB]

I found another scenery that has a 2-part 3D Chevron logo that does pick up incidental light and projects shadowing, from the light reflected off the pavement and nearby gas station building, which is an impressive demo of the MSFS 2024 rendering system.

However, that scenery package did not attempt to make the Blue fascia behind the Chevron logo illuminated as a emissive texture Material, such as you might wish to do ("Jarnie-Gumption" ?)

I like the look of the barge in your photo, and see that Blue fascia as a challenge to be tinkered with as time and energy allow; a prized accomplishment when achieved through patient persistence over time.

GaryGB