I cringed a little when I saw the title of your post since I have been meaning to do a tutorial about my lighting system for so long, but (due to laziness...) I still have a lot of proper, scientific-method-type research to do before I shoot off my mouth.

In terms of overall lot lighting, I started with Gunmod's system (specifically 2.2 BETA RC1), but I have modified it so much he wouldn't recognize it any more. I also have special lighting files for overcast days, different color dawn and twilights, etc., which I switch between using the setLotLightingFile cheat. I even use that to change the color indoors if it's a building with stained glass windows and I want the light to come in colored.

Recently I have also begun adding lighting override files to the buyable lights I use. I am trying to make all of the candles and other open-flame type of lights have the real characteristics of firelight: very yellow-orange, very limited in their range, and giving very stark shadows on people's faces. Much more dramatic.

Check out "Paul speaks a secret" to see what I mean... The only light source in that barn is the tiny window far across the room and the torchère. Compare it with "Flann is more than sad", which is supposed to be similarly ill-lit with just a few candles. That room is so much brighter, and the light looks almost incandescently blue. (Alas, we will never know how sexy Brude would have truly looked by candlelight.)

But all this has been the experiments of the last 2 months or so, and it still breaks things sometimes, so I'm not ready to release those files just yet. Literally every time I start the game, I am still tweaking a few lighting settings to see what broke and what is fixed since the last time. But at least I seem to have figured out the Uni medieval lights -- the three-candle torchère and wall-light and the four-candle desk light. They are the ones I use the most.

Actually I would be curious to know whether anyone has noticed the difference lately in terms of indoor lighting, and whether I should back off a bit. Sometimes I feel like I am struggling again to keep the pictures well-lit enough. My goal is to change the color of the light and to increase the overall contrast of my images, not reduce the overall brightness. But it's hard once I've started taking pictures for a scene... if I see it's too dark, I would have to add more lights and then go back and take the pictures again. (More laziness...)

Osh and Paul by candlelightBrude and Flann by "candlelight"

Well this is handy... a lighting discussion already going. First of all I have noticed without noticing that the lighting in your pictures has been better lately. As in I keep thinking "wow that lighting is amazing... how did she do that" but I hadn't really sat down and realised that the reason I was thinking that was because you had changed some things. I just thought you were getting more awesome with your picture composition. So I think the new candlelight is really great.

The other thing is very sad. Bon Voyage has broken my lighting. You might notice in my new post (yes I have a new post finally!) that the lighting is back to stupid yucky maxis lighting. But I don't know what to do! I saw that someone else has developed on gunmod mod even further which apparentely works for seasons and half of Bon Voyage. But it also has some issues. Bah. Has anyone else had any problems with lighting with BV or is it just me It makes me very sad. I am thinking I will try installing the developed version and see if it works but I just wanted to check whether anyone else is having these probs and if so did you have a better way to fix it.

Also, when you are ready Lothere I would love love love a lighting tutorial. But don't worry, I know you have a lot on your plate and I understand you not wanting to give out potentially breaky files (because unlike you I probably would not be able to work out why it was broken )

I like seeing Brude beside your name, especially since it means "Truth", which seems somehow fitting. But feel free to upload your own avatar if you don't like the local selection. You could always use Radomir's handsome mug.

What a shame about BV and lighting... I was just looking at the MATY thread, and I can't quite figure out what "1/2 BV" is supposed to mean, unless it is the lack of dawn and dusk. I would guess it's fixable, but without BV myself I can't try it out. Just like with Seasons, they probably introduced some new lightingState types, so the old radiance lighting mod doesn't know about them.

Didn't you have radiance lighting working with Seasons already? I never downloaded an updated file, I just soldiered on updating my own since I know how it works. (Haven't gotten around to doing spring yet since we haven't had spring in Lothere since then!) I would be a little surprised if installing BV overwrote the seasons mod.. or wait, did you reinstall everything? You should try installing the new 1/2 BV mod, and if that doesn't help you can always ask me here. I don't have a nice, clean lighting.txt file to offer but I have a head full of research.

Sorry, I meant your name meant truth... actually Brude's name apparently meant "king" or something like. It is Pictish rather than Irish, but that's OK. I just loved the sound of it, not to mention the obvious homonym of "brood".

If you didn't install a new Seasons-enabled version of the radiance mod, you probably didn't have the radiance lighting even before BV. Or rather, you would have had it during the summer season only, since the summer reuses the original lighting settings from the previous game. (The lightingState "day".) For Autumn, Winter, and Spring (assuming the lot you were in had advanced out of summer) your indoors shots should have been base-game bright, as far as I know.

Now, maybe what happens is that BV overwrites all of the lighting settings, including the radiance settings, or maybe it adds its own lightingState and no longer uses "day" at all. In the latter case the radiance settings are still there, they're just being ignored.

Anyway, I'll let you try out the new mod. Whoever made it has surely figured out at least that much.

Dusk and dawn lighting is built into the base game, but it is turned off by default unless you have Gunmod's radiance lighting or some other mod. All seasons use the same dusk & dawn, so you would have seen no difference there in terms of base game vs. Seasons. But if you had dusk and dawn in the first place, then it proves you had the radiance lighting mod working.

The only place where you would have really seen a difference with Seasons vs. non-Seasons would be an indoor scene taken in the autumn, winter, or spring. Then the lighting indoors would be quite bright compared to what you're used to with radiance lighting mod. Summer would still have been using radiance lighting, so all would be good until you reached the autumn. If you shot all your indoor scenes in lots that were still stuck on summer, then you wouldn't have noticed a difference.

As for me, I have been pouting over my flashing blue snow for so long, but I just read somewhere that it may be due to the Targas pond water mod that I am using. I will take it out and try again next time, and maybe we will finally get some snow in Lothere, sheesh! But I'm afraid it will still be too bright... I am afraid snow has a separate lighting (like pond water, heh) that makes it immune to any changes you make in the lighting files, and leaves you with mutant radioactive glowing water/snow. So maybe I will have to keep pouting.

Hurrah! The updated lighting mod seems to have solved the problem although I don't think I will be able to get sunset and rise on the BV lots. Hopefully someone will fix that because I am intending to use them a lot. Man... I am so excited about my new castle.... because I found this massive ship that is from BV and seems to be basically a decoration or something and now I can have it beached in the cove where the castle is built. Sorry I keep rabitting on about it .

Oh blast! My lighting mod is not fixed after all! There is some semblance of it but not like it was before. Now I am getting this pitch black room glowing people thing when I try to take indoor pics during the day and basically no effect at all if I take them during the night. What am I going to do?! I can't live without my lighting mod. Do you have any idea why it is doing that. It used to when I first started writing my story similar to in this post http://www.mhalwae.com/2007/01/20/valeriya-is-reminded-of-her-place/ Like the whole room is pitch black except for the objects which are bright. And I don't like it it makes me a sad panda . Lothere, do you have any idea why it would be doing that and how I could fix it? I don't know how I changed it in the beginning actually. I am not sure when it stopped happening... after installation of some EP I guess. Oh poo! I really thought it was fixed.

A sad panda? I am only a foolish badger, so all of what I say below may be superstition and not science, but this is what I have learned so far by myself about lights. So...

Congratulations! You have discovered that there are two types of lighting: direct (or "practical") and diffusion. Direct light is responsible for lighting Sims and objects. You need diffusion light to light up the walls and floors.

There are a few lamps in the game that (probably as a bug) only give off one or the other, but since the base lighting is so bright, you never notice. However, with all of my fiddling with custom lighting, I have occasionally "broken" lights and caused diffusion light to stop being cast by otherwise perfectly functioning lights. That's probably what is happening to you, since I notice that your Radomir chapter has the medieval wall lamp from Uni, which does ordinarily work correctly.

The direct lighting is defined inside of the package file itself, though it can be overriden in a text file (which I do to make candlelight more orange, for example). However, diffuse lighting, AFAIK, can only be set by the lighting text files in your game directory. The game comes with defaults, but the Radiance Lighting mod overrides some of those settings with settings of its own. If you have a badly written override text file, the lamp can still fall back on the direct lighting defined in its package, but it has nothing to fall back on in terms of diffusion lighting, so the room is dark, while objects are still brightly lit.

What may be happening is that you have more than one lighting mod and there are some incompatibilities. Or maybe the new Bon-Voyage-ready mod has some flaws.

1. Does this happen with all lamps or just a few? Try out some of the non-custom base game lamps in a dark room and see what happens. My problems have always been on particular lamps, not all lamps.
2. Does it matter if it's summer or some other season? Regular lot or BV lot?

If you can track down all of the files that were installed by the lighting mod(s) you have, it might be easiest to remove them all and install one and only one of them again.

If you really want to try an experiment, you can install one of my light overrides and hope it wins out among the other mods you have.

1. Find your game installation directory (not your My Documents\EA Games directory where your downloads go, but the real game directory). Find the directory The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Lights
2. Find your Lighting.txt file, make a backup copy, and then open Lighting.txt in a text editor such as Notepad
3. Search through it (perhaps at the bottom) for something like:
   

   ####################################################
   # Support for Custom Lights added by the CEP3
   #
   wildInclude "CEP3_CustomLights/*.nlo"
   

   If it is not there at all, copy and paste that text at the very end of the file and save the file.

4. If there is no such directory as TSData\Res\Lights\CEP3_CustomLights, then create it
5. Create a new file in Notepad called "meryt_firelight_overrides.nlo" and save it in the CEP_CustomLights directory. If stupid Notepad tries to put a ".txt" on the end anyway, close and rename the file and then open it in Notepad again. It must end in .nlo or it won't work.
6. Copy and paste the following stuff into the new file and save:
   

   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light intensity 0.8
   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light color  (0.878, 0.438, 0.109)
   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light falloffRate 3
   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light diffusionSourceIntensity 0.04
   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light diffusionSourceColor  (0.878, 0.438, 0.109)
   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light diffusionSourceMin  (0,0)
   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light diffusionSourceMax (0,0)
   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light diffusionSourceFalloff 7
   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light diffusionSourceWallIntensityScale 0.02
   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light diffusionSourceFloorIntensityScale 0.05
   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light diffusionSourceIsDirectional 0
   lightAttribOverride lightingTableMedieval_light diffusionSourceDirectionalFalloff 0
   
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light intensity 0.9
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light color  (0.878, 0.438, 0.109)
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light falloffRate 3
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light diffusionSourceIntensity 0.05
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light diffusionSourceColor  (0.878, 0.438, 0.109)
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light diffusionSourceMin  (0,0)
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light diffusionSourceMax (0,0)
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light diffusionSourceFalloff 6
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light diffusionSourceWallIntensityScale 0.05
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light diffusionSourceFloorIntensityScale .05
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light diffusionSourceIsDirectional 0
   lightAttribOverride lightingWallMedieval_light diffusionSourceDirectionalFalloff 0
   
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light intensity 1
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light color  (0.878, 0.438, 0.109)
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light falloffRate 3
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light diffusionSourceIntensity 0.05
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light diffusionSourceColor  (0.878, 0.438, 0.109)
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light diffusionSourceMin  (0,0)
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light diffusionSourceMax (0,0)
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light diffusionSourceFalloff 6
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light diffusionSourceWallIntensityScale 0.2
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light diffusionSourceFloorIntensityScale .08
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light diffusionSourceIsDirectional 0
   lightAttribOverride lightingFloorMedieval_light diffusionSourceDirectionalFalloff 0
   

7. Start your game, plunk down one of the medieval three-candle floor lamps in a dark room, and see whether the objects and walls both light up. They should be rather orange as well. The settings above should affect the 3 medieval lamps from Uni -- wall, floor, and table -- as well as any custom lamps that are cloned off of those three. Sadly, there are not many clones, which is why my own custom lighting file is far longer than that.
8. If it doesn't work, cry like a panda. If it does, dance like a ferret.

If it doesn't work, there may be other modified files elsewhere. Each EP has its own TSData\Res\Lights directory and any light settings in those directories will be applied as well. In particular, I have modified the Lighting.txt file in the Seasons directory because that is where the lighting is defined (not for lamps but for day/night/dawn/dusk) for the different seasons. But if some joker modified settings for lamps in those directories, it could be interfering. I haven't tried anything but GunMod's lighting mod so I don't know what the other guys are doing.

Note that my mod above is my current experimental version 0.0.64 or so, since I tweak it every time before I start the game. Currently I find that the table candle is running a little dim. By the time you read this, I may already have changed the settings. But the floor lamp, I think, is so remarkably different from the regular settings that you will surely notice the difference. (Sweet, sweet shadowed faces...)

Incidentally, all of the RLS-____.txt files in your Sims 2\TsData\Res\Lights are from Radiance Lighting... they override and/or fix a lot of the in-game lamps to make them more compatible with Radiance Lighting, since the "Radiance Lighting Mod" per se, as most people understand it, affects daylight. If you didn't change the lamps they would be super-bright. For what it's worth, I have always considered walls and floors too dark with out-of-the-box Radiance Lighting, but they are still far brighter than what you showed me.

Also, for your information, the Lighting.txt file is the main lighting file that is always read by the game before anything else. If you have a lighting mod installed, this file is almost certainly a modified version of the orginal game's Lighting.txt, possibly referencing other additional files.

In my Lighting.txt (in addition to modifying all the daylight/nightlight settings), GunMod added the line include "RLS-Main.txt" which causes the Radiance Lighting System files to be loaded, which sets up the lamps. The line you may have had to add, wildInclude "CEP3_CustomLights/*.nlo", causes all files with the extension .nlo in the CEP_CustomLights directory to be loaded as well. Your boyf will surely nod intelligently at all this even if it doesn't make sense to you, so avail yourself of him if necessary.

Or you can be a sissy (which panda-like crying may be a symptom of) and just reinstall everything, and pick one and only one mod and install it, crossing fingers and holding thumbs.

Hi Lothere. Sorry for not getting back to you about this for such an age. Things have been so crazy with being away so much in the last month and I feel like I have barely got to do anything with my sims for so long. Unfortunately using your scripts didn't fix the problem I am still getting this stupid light from most of the lights I actually want to use. I haven't replied for a while in the hope that I could try and fix it somehow by playing around with it a bit but unfortunately it hasn't worked. The last few chapters I managed to get out before I left have been outside so it wasn't a problem with them but now I want to go indoors again and meh. I think perhaps I will try now just restoring the original lighting and then downloading gunmods original radiance with out BV updates by whoever it was and see what I can do with it with your scripts. Maybe I can fix it somehow without having to have this new update. I am really not happy with it, Gunmods radiance has served me well in the past and I never had too much of problem with it. We will see anyway. Meh... I just really don't want to do it, it is such a pain trawling through all of this to try and find the problems when I really want to write my story. And I am worried that I will just break it more .

Anyways... I am off to give it a try at least. Perhaps I can localise the problem. I really hope so. If you have any more advice on the matter I would really appreciate it .

If I can't fix it I am going to try and take the pics anyway using the lights that give the right lighting in some tricky sort of way.

Wish me luck

Hurrah! After spending the whole day installing and reinstalling, reading scripts, crying and tearing my hair out (okay... not really the last two but still it has been quite frustrating and I have been making some very grumpy faces) my lights are finally working again and with your beautiful variations Lothere. I am just wondering, are the walls and floor still quite dark with yours. I was looking in the post with Paul and Osh and you could see the walls quite well so I think it is a bit darker on mine. But it is definitely different from before when the walls and floor were pitch black and all the objects glowed flouro yellow (including Radomir's face ). Now they are a lovely orange colour and have shadows and my sims look fantastic.

So... how did I fix it in the end... I followed your steps earlier but unfortunately to no avail and after installing and reinstalling both mods separately and generally trying more and more desperate measures including going through every single light and making a list of which ones which were working and the ones which weren't. Then I managed to find some online list of which expansion pack some objects were in (at least it was a list for university) and it turned out all the lights that weren't working were university ones. So I checked again with the lighting files and it turns out that there isn't anything in the lighting.text for university, but you can add your own nlo, like yours. So I put your changes in the university lights folder instead of the main one and changed that text file instead and then it worked. I am not sure why it didn't work in the sims2 folder to actually. But oh well... I am happy.

One thing I find very odd though. I compared the lighting text files for gunmod and the new ones and they are the same (unless I got mixed up somewhere). So I find it really weird that somehow these lights got kicked off into horrible wall/floor darkness and scary face shadows. Very strange. I guess originally there was some override in the main folder like you said but it got broken somehow. Oh well... it seems to be okay now (hopefully I won't mess it up again somehow). Unfortunately just in time for bed so no sims writing for me today. Blah... I was so looking forward to writing all this weekend and then my plans got interrupted yesterday by my friend coming round for an emergency debriefing after spending a course with the guy she liked and then today (as well as yesterday up until she dropped by) trying to fix the lighting and cleaning my room and the kitchen). Meh... another weekend down the drain. Oh well... maybe I will get to write something tomorrow *hoping*.

I was wondering, have you ever thought of putting your lighting mod up on the web for download? I think the lighting your candles gives off is so much better and realistic than what I had before and your pictures always look amazing.

And thank you again for you lighting script and for all your help. I couldn't have fixed the problem without your suggestions, I wouldn't even have known where to begin. Thank you so much!

Look how cute Wulf looks in that picture. He would rival the Old Man if he didn't have his father's jaw. Marie looks young in her new dress and smaller.

Dayum, Lothere! If you put your lighting file up for download, I'd totally snatch it up. Those are BEEYOOTIFUL pics you've got up there!

I was wondering if using such lighting mods strains a laptop significantly? I figure it would since you gotta add more lights to make up for the added darkness... but it's sooo tempting...

Is there any chance that you might do this tutorial, Lothere?
I'm getting seriously annoyed with my lighting. But since I have no programming knowledge at ALL, I wouldn't dare meddle without a step-by-step guide.

I use Chocolate Pi's Gunmod lighting, too. And I have Uni, NL, OfB, Pets and Seasons, and I'm thinking about getting FreeTime.

A Lothere Lighting Mod sounds wonderful! I would almost kill for the athmospere the lighting creates in your pictures.