Info on Objects responding to light differently than map Pieces

[HwitVlf]

I've heard it said that SoM's Objects respond to light differently than map Pieces, so its hard to make secret doors etc, but I think the problem might be in the texture material's settings. ‎ 

In Metasequoia's "Material Properties" there are some sliders:

Alpha = Sets how see-through the part is.
Diffuse= Sets how much light the part will reflect from lamps.
Emission= Sets how much light is "emitted" from the part (also makes item see-through in SoM)
Specular= unused in SoM
Power= Unused in SoM
Ambient = Unused in SoM (instead SoM uses the "Basic Lighting" setting in the Map Editor for this effect)

Metasequoia's default for Diffuse is 0.8 whereas SoM's map Pieces use 1.0 so if you don't change this in Meta, your Objects will reflect less light than SoM's. I made an example "hidden wall" Object to show the effect (I didn't bother aligning the texture perfectly on the Object- just an example).

[Verdite]

So when you imported the object to metaseq, did it have adjustments already made in the diffuse slider?

[HwitVlf]

I didn't import any objects into Meta- just made a new square primitive and new material (using SoM's texture) for the test.
As far as I know, the material's diffuse settings are stored in the model (MDO) file and there's no way to load an MDO in Meta; so I am 'guessing' when I say "SoM uses diffuse=1.0". That's just what seems to match existing Piece's lighting. :)

[Verdite]

Ah i see! Interesting. Yeh i couldnt find a mdo converter anywhere either ‎ 

[dmpdesign]

Brilliant discovery!

[HwitVlf]

I just learned a little more information about this topic; looks like Sword of Moonlight completely ignores all material settings (diffuse, emission, specular, alpha etc) when making a map Piece model and instead uses a single standardized material setting for all map Pieces. The significance being, that when making a map Piece, changing material settings in Metasequoia will have no effect.

For Object models though, Metasequoia's "diffuse" material setting changes the overall color brightness. So if you set "diffuse" to 0.5, you'll end up with the same effect as if you darkened the material's "color" setting ‎  by half (ie RGB= 128). ‎