Lighthouse Beam of light - Best Settings?

As a 1st project last night I made myself a lighthouse.

The beam I constructed from some tapered prims and selected White colour, with transparancy and glow settings to make the beam just right.

Not sure if it's quire right yet (looking good during the day and the night)

Does anyone have any suggestions about colour (white I guess) Transparancy level and Glow setting to make a realistic looking light beam for any time of the day?

At first I had it looking nice during the day, but at night it looked like a grey prim going round, then adjusted it a bit, but it still needs tweaking.

Thanks for any suggestions

try a very light tint of blue or yellow instead of white?

You didn't mention what kind of texture you're using for your beam. Usually the best thing to do for this sort of thing is to use an alpha gradient. The beginning of the beam should be fully opaque, and should grade to fully transparent as it travels outward from the light source.

If you've just been using a blank texture, or any other completely opaque image, then that's why your beam looks like just a spinning prim. Grade the transparency, and it will look much more like a real light beam.

Thanks to you both for the replies.

Yes, all I did was to make the BEAM a blank white, then set almost full transparancy and give it some glow.

It's looks "ok" but I feel it could look a little better.

thanks for both the suggestions. I will try as you both suggest.

1. Use a gradient texture. With glow nowadays it's best to not use a complete white to transp. gradient, but something from 50% white to 0% alpha. (Or stretch a complete gradient)
If the gradient texture is pixelated in some way, set it to a vstretch of 0, (or play with it). Glow icw with gradient can cause 'blotches or steps' nowadays
2. Set transp. high, to 80% or so
3. Set fullbright or make the prim a lightsource. (Both will cause overburn)
4. Set a high glow.

Thanks.

I went into Photosahop and made a small 256x256 gradient image file going from full white to totally clear.

Uploaded that "in game" and used 1/3rd of it on each of my 3 tapered light beam prims.

Also added a tiny fraction of yellow as was suggeted.

It's about 98% fine.

If you look close at the end of the beam you can see a few coloures within the beam as it fades to nothing.

I have experimented with the transparancy and glow to get it to somehting I think looks ok.

Actually, my beam now looks better than a few other lighthouses I have seen so Im on the right track

The end of the beam I'm not sure about yet.

I inititally left the end transparent, which I guess is more realistic as you should not really see the "end" of a beam of light, but it kinda looks better to have a bright white spot as the end as it spins round, esp from a distance so you see a white spot appear (as you woud in real life)

If I make the end transparent then it almost looks like there is no light as the beam faces you.

It does not quite right in this respect, but not quite sure how to change it yet.

Never even seen the "vstretch" thing you mentioned.

Just meant vertical size of texture. Some gradients are 'patterned' inside. In combination with glow, this can cause blotches or uneven areas. By setting size to 0, ony a single pixel line is used. But YMMV.

Thanks. I understand what you mean now.

I had to slide the gradient texture a bit as on my original image after uploading it to SL, the normal BLUR that gets's applied to images mean that the starting white was being blurred backwards into the ending transparent section (if that makes sense)

At the moment I have not applied any transparent (just using the transparancy that came with my gradient image upload) with just a tiny amount of glow.

I will try another with a high transparancy and higher glow and see what difference that makes to the look of it.

I realise it's not so much what's realistic (in the real world) but what looks right to mmost people and what they would "expect" beam of light to look like.

I would put the glow on the light (the lamp, I mean), not the light beam.

Light beams are very hazy and indistinct when seen from the sides.

I would put an invisible light prim on the far end of the beam, so that anything the beam hits will light up. If the beam is VERY long and you expect things to intersect it partway along its length, you could put additional light prims in there.

thanks for the advice.

At the moment I have a solid white to clear gradient with the addition of 80% transparancy on to of that and a 2% or 3% glow to the entire beam

More to get it looking "good" than looking 100% realistic I guess.

Which is the key desison I suppose, should things look realistic, or more "enhanced" than real life.

You are of course quite correct, you'd not really see much of a beam in reality, esp in daytime. Yet, if you turn it all the way down, it can look very dull and boring.
So I suppose I'm trying to balance in the middle.

What I do need to do it not (as had been suggested a few postings ago) go from full white to full clear, but rather from say 50& white as the starting point to full clear.

My problem is, in Photoshop. I don't know how to create a smooth blend from 50% white to 100% clear (transparant) across a 1024 image span.

Create an alpha channel, open it, and use your gradient tool to apply a gradient from 50% grey on one side of the image to black on the other. And for heaven's sake, don't use a 1024 x1024 texture. There's no need for anything that huge for something as simple as this. 128 x 128 should be fine and you will save people a lot of rez time.

Thanks. I just was trying a LARGE 1024 texture to try and minimise the coloured rings/bands I was seeing at the end where the white was fading out to fully clear.

but made no difference