Hello Modcraft, since a recent topic it seems people need some help with using the tool
Light Adder.I admit, it took me a number of hours to understand what I had to do to use the it properly, mainly with the colour values. This is a very short tutorial as the process itself is quite simple.
Gather your Light Adder into a folder and bring in any M2 files you wish to add too as shown.
Once you're all set up, prepare that M2 file I mentioned.
For this tutorial, I'm using BonfireNorthrend_01.M2. Drag the M2 file onto the .exe file and a window should appear.
Now you see some text and commands. Let me give you a run down of what each one means and does before we get into this.
h : Brings up the command menu, useful for when you've been hammering out colour values and forgot a key.
i : Light information on the M2 you loaded. Always use this first because if the object has no lights attached to it, it will say so when prompted with i. If it has lights, a bunch of info will pop up. We'll get to those.
c : This is what you use for an object that has no lights attached to it.
m : Modifies existing light values, use for objects that already have lights. When you use the command, you need to enter the ID. Just put in 0. Now you're met with a bunch of other commands, which explains themselves but I'll include a pic anyway.
d : deletes existing lights. This has been a bit buggy for me, so I'm not sure if it even works as intended. I never need to use it, as modifying is easier.
x : Exit.
Now that we know what we're dealing with and we know this object has no lights by using i, we'll type in c and begin adding lights. You should be met with this.
By using
this site we get a better understanding of what these required values are. I'm not going to explain much of the values on that site, as the only ones you'll need are the ones I'll cover. If you wish to deviate, that's your own choice.
Now the last values are pretty easy to understand. They are coordinates, X,Y,Z. They will dictate where the center of the light will be and this is important, as M2's that have their light source higher will emit light different than ones closer to the ground. The values I am using are Blizzard's for a standard bonfire but you will have to experiment with other M2's. Hit enter.
What do these mean? It's an RGB scale, which controls the colour of the light. Now, lighting for M2's does not use normal RGB scaling. Instead, it uses decimal color codes. Here is a
converter I found for easy use. Pick your colour, put them through the converter and insert them into their respective positions. For me, I used the html value B37146 which resulted in 0.702, 0.443, and 0.275. 0.702 would be AR, 0.443 would be AG, and 0.275 would be AB. AI should be set to 0. Now repeat the three codes in the same order but instead set DI to 1.
It should result in this.
That's it, you're done! Exit the tool, put the object into a custom MPQ patch and test it out.
The lights are not 100% working, this is due to an issue with bounding boxes as explained in the original thread. I'm not a programmer or modeler, I do not understand these values. It may be something my project looks into in the future but for now, you're on your own.
