Ok so how do you make the inside of a building DARK?

I know it seems like a silly queston, but there are all sorts of ways to lighten up the inside of a structure but just how do I make it dark inside? Like scary house dark? I have a box basically which is completely closed in (no doors, windows any of the obvious stuff) and yet when the sun is up it is bright as day inside. Even at midnight it is light inside. I know I can adjust my particular gamma to get my screen darker but I want to make it so it stays dark for everyone. Any suggestions?

One tequnique that was suggested for this a while back (I forget by whom) was to use layers of translucent black phantom prims, spaced at regular intervals. The idea is when you're looking at something up close, you might be seeing it just through one or two of the black sheets, so it will be just a little dim, but when you look at something further away, you're looking through a lot more "blackness", so it will be much darker. I've never tried the technique myself, but the principle seems sound.

There are a few drawbacks that come to mind, of course. Obviously, it increases your prim count, and camera control could be problematic.

A simpler method might be just to use dark textures on the inside surfaces. There wouldn't actually be any less light inside the structure, but all the surfaces would appear to be less lit, providing the illusion that it's dark inside. You could even script the whole place to cycle through textures with varying levels of dimness, to offset the changing lighting conditions throughout the SL day/night cycle. Sync it with the SL clock, use the right amount of subtlety in the changes, and the results could be quite compelling.

Placing the entire room underwater will make it much darker.

Can you not just use black-colored lights? Or does that not work? *Goes to try it out*

I've seen and tried the first method, the multiple layers of phantom transparent black planes (thin boxes actually). It was good for making a cave entrance, but the camera problems would probably make it not ideal for the inside of a house.

I tried the phantom darkness sheets too. It was hard to get them to overlap in a natural way, and if you hang them facing the same direction you can't see them from the side. Next I tried making a huge dark transparent phantom shape, as twisted and thin as possible. Hung a bunch mostly around the ceiling of the cave. It made the top half of the cave look nice and gloomy, but also made targeting really difficult.

I think my favorite trick so far is fog. It doesn't look dark, but does look quite cave-like. Haven't tried black fog yet ... hmmm!

Black colored lights don't work, unfortunately.

Some time in the near future, we'd have negative lights. You set the illumination to negative and it subtracts light away from the surrounding.

There's always changing the color of the prim or it's faces to a darker shade of gray/black. Even if it's textured, the color option does shade the texture on the prim to the color selected. A much simpler and easier solution should you need to use that same texture in a non-dark area as well. Also useful for simulating colored lights on a texture.

Just so you know, no matter how dark you make the room, the sunlight still effects avatars even in a fully enclosed box. So the sense of forboding darkness would be totally disturbed by sun lit avatars inside the room. A pitch black room with fully visible and brightly lit avatars just doesn't look right.

Only way I can see to get around it is to own a sim and make it constantly night time or figure out a way to script a suit of dark opaque prims that cling onto avatars when they enter a dark room. Not sure how well that illusionary solution would work or how specifically to do it script wise but it can be done.

Loved the Nakama tunnel. However, it did occur to me that a floating prim that had variable transparency and always placed itself between the AV and the current camera position would be doable. Ideally, it would be a gradient with a pre-programmed 'source' for the light. This could give a phase of the moon effect with the camera moving round an AV giving partial to full blockage of the light. I think that this would only work where the background was really dark, however.

ark transparent prims do look good but they get in the way with the camera in weird ways. A comparable alternative may be using stationary particles, they won't affect the camera and may involve a lower number of prims too.

The best techique so far is placing the build underwater. You can see an example in a fairy cave that I build, it's located in Technocity. Just search in places for "Kitten Lulu's Emporium" but pick the Emporium park, not the emporium itself. There is a big tree with mushrooms on the western side of the park, with a rabbit hole below it. Go down and see how deep the hole is, clicking on it to enter the fairy cave.

Unfortunately, I don't have any snapshot to upload at the moment.

I used shadow maps on these surfaces.

The lighted parts were made clear in the alpha channel
these were done as an overlay

I also added it to the wall textures where i could


Hope that helps

ok, i know for a fact the best method would be to have it underwater, i tryed to light a building underwater and the programming makes it impossible. and the problem with genes suggestion of shadowing your textures is that its gret with the walls and such but with the desk, it makes it looks like its on one plane and just looks tacky. the phantom prims might work, if the idea is to only look at an object as though it were in 2D (straight at it). besides that theeffect would seem cheesy. so i would suggest making yur haunted house have a waiting area above the water and then go down into for the house. have fun MUAHAHAHAHHAHA