How to set
up a Global Lens Flare
by Fluen
This tutorial is a thorough and in-depth explanation and
reference on setting up and using the LensFlare command in
the level editor. For those who don’t want to read the full
article I have placed a quick “recipe” on how to set up a
working lens flare (written in red) near the end of this
tutorial.
To understand this tutorial you must understand how to
calculate global coordinates. If you don’t, I suggest that
you skim through the tutorial “How to understand and
calculate global coordinates” so you can understand and
follow this tutorial. You can find that tutorial here:
How to understand and calculate
global coordinates
In the following I will use the word “sun” to describe
the sun-looking part (the centre) of the lens flare. It has
no connection to the sun used to lighten a level in the
level editor.
Similarly I use the compass directions as they appear
in-game – see the tutorial “How to understand and calculate
global coordinates” to find a diagram of the correct compass
directions.
The command for the global lens flare is:
LensFlare= Y,Z,X,red,green,blue
There are several things to consider before making a lens
flare and I shall elaborate on them further below.
Am I done moving my level around in the editor?
Just like the Load Screen, the lens flare is a final touch –
unless, of course, you are prepared to do some
re-calculating during your level-building.
Is it a “realistic” sun?
If not, everything is possible and you are mostly on your
own. You can even make the lens flare appear below
Lara.
From what compass direction should it be visible?
I must warn you that the two most common compass directions
for the sun (west and south) are difficult, maybe even
impossible to use properly, because of the orientation of
the editor and the limitations of the coordinate system.
What time of day is it?
Sunrise and sunset demands a low sun – noon a sun high in
the sky. And this factor is decided by the Z-coordinate.
But also by the size of the two other coordinates.
What colour should it have?
The colour is determined by the three last coordinates. They
work just like the colour settings for all lights in the
editor. But the colour of the lens flare is also
affected by the colour of the horizon and the
Layer1-command.
What rooms should the lens flare been seen in?
Even though Lara is outdoor in several rooms, it might not
be desirable to let her see a lens flare in all of them.
Especially because the lens flare goes through the
textured boxes (walls, floors and roofs that define the
limits around your level) in the rooms adjacent to the
unused part of the editor world. Use the NL-button (NL means
No LensFlare) in the outdoor rooms, where you don’t want the
lens flare to be visible.
Are there many obstacles (walls and roofs with a density)
that might ruin the view?
Once it has passed the outer box, the lens flare is stopped
by constructions with a density and becomes pale near them.
It might turn so ugly that it is better to turn the lens
flare off altogether in that\those room(s).
Do I want to make the lens flare a special experience or
just a tool to spice my level?
In Tomb Raider 4 – The Last Revelation, I have found only
two lens flares – one in Desert Railroad and one in Coastal
Ruins. The one in Desert Railroad is just used to show that
it is bright day, while the one in Coastal Ruins gets a
presentation in a flyby sequence and sets the atmosphere in
that level.
You too must decide if you want to use the lens flare effect
sparsely to make a more impressive effect when you finally
use it or if you just put it in the sky to indicate what
time of day it is. Too much use of it lessens the impression
it makes.
Lens flare and compass
directions
I have made some quick-lines here both as guidance and as an
easy LensFlare-command. The lens flare height above the
horizon is approximately the same and the colour of the sun
is white in all cases. The lines should be ready for copying
and pasting into the script.
In the middle of everything (exact noon):
LensFlare= 52224,-500000,52224,255,255,255
But you will have to nearly twist Lara’s head off to see the
sun and not only the sparks in the lens.
North:
LensFlare= 52224,-18750,208896,255,255,255
North-east:
LensFlare= 208896,-30000,208896,255,255,255
East:
LensFlare= 208896,-18750,52224,255,255,255
South and south-east:
LensFlare=
52224,-15000,0,255,255,255
South-west:
LensFlare= 0,-15000,0,255,255,255
West and north-west:
LensFlare=
0,-15000,52224,255,255,255
The X- and Y-coordinate values I have used are the lowest
value possible (0), half the size of the level editor window
(52224), the whole size of the editor window (104448) and
the double size of the editor window (208896).
TRLE accepts huge values in the LensFlare-command (the
Z-coordinate for the lens flare in Desert Railroad is
–1600000 – that is 6250 clicks above zero level!), but it
does not accept negative X- and Y-coordinates – I tried, but
the program just ignores the negative sign and places the
lens flare according to the positive values. That leads to a
problem.
Imagine that you are riding by car or train and watch the
trees and houses pass by and disappear in the horizon as you
drive on. But the sun in the sky barely moves and only does
so by the passing of the day. This is because of the
relative distance between you and the things you see.
If you pass a house a few hundred meters\yards away from the
road or railroad and take a look at your watch right when
you pass it, the house will be 8.3 km\5.2 miles behind you
five minutes later if you travel at a speed of 100 km\h
(62.5 mph). But the distance between the sun and the earth
is almost 150 million km (almost 94 million miles) and your
petty travel speed of 100 km\h or 62.5 mph means that you
really don’t move seen in relation to the sun.
The above situation works better in TRLE concerning the lens
flare. If you position your lens flare far out of the editor
world, Lara can move around a great deal and the sun will
still appear at the same place in the sky. But some of the
LensFlare-commands written above contain small coordinates
(the ones written in red) and then small changes in Lara’s
position have great significance.
As an example of this I suggest you make the following
changes in your version of the Playable Tutorial Level (make
backups of the level and the script first):
1. Enter the Outside1-3 and Outside1-3 Top rooms and press
the O-button (the outdoor button, which is a condition to
make the lens flare work in all its glory) in every room.
2. Remove the finish-trigger from Outside1, so Lara gets the
chance to run around in these rooms.
3. Remove the jeep, so Lara has unlimited mobility.
4. Move Lara to one of the Outside1-3 rooms (optional).
5. Output the wad.
6. Enter the script and add this line (it’s ready for
copying and pasting):
LensFlare= 33792,5376,30720,255,255,255
7. Convert the new script.
(The block in use is Outside1, X = 32, Y = 29 and Z = -21
clicks – I know the Z-coordinate is below the floor level in
Outside1, but the lens flare seems to have a standard raise
added to its Z-coordinate, so to get the lens flare down
very close to Lara, I lowered it somewhat.)
You should get a very local “global” lens flare,
which Lara is able to run around and examine from most
angles. I think it looks funny with a private sun, but it
also shows that with coordinates inside the editor world,
just a small running around changes the angle of vision of
the sun – and if you wanted your lens flare to appear as a
sunrise in the east and Lara suddenly sees it in the north,
you might be in trouble.
And that is why the south and west side of the editor world
works so poorly. You can’t get X- and Y-coordinates lower
than zero and just moving your level around in the
editor window will be enough to change the compass direction
the lens flare appears from in-game.
To use the south or south-east lens flare you must place
your level:
A. In the right side of the editor window and in the middle
between top and bottom to get the southern lens flare.
B. In the right side of the editor window and in the top
corner to get the south-eastern lens flare.
To use the west or north-west lens flare you must place your
level:
A. In the middle of the editor window and in the bottom to
get the western lens flare.
B. In the bottom of the editor window and in the left corner
to get the north-western lens flare.
To get the south-eastern lens flare your level must be
placed as far right and down in the level editor window as
possible – but avoid the bottom right corner itself,
as rooms placed there cause a bug, where the textures in the
room and adjacent rooms disappear in-game, so Lara appears
to be standing “in the middle of nowhere”
How to set up a lens flare
along a specific line – the script part
That is enough about “preset” lens flares. I want to make a
custom-made one. For this purpose and for testing the global
lens flare I have made a small park level, where Lara has
her private swimming pool\aquarium (I wish I had such a
great swimming pool).
And I want the lens flare to be visible along the line of
the park gate – this line:
The accentuated line runs along the X=32-line. And that is
the only piece of information I need to know. The global
X-coordinate is then Xglobal
= (32 + 1) * 1024 = 33792.
So right now my LensFlare-command looks like this:
LensFlare= Y,Z,33792,red,green,blue.
As I explained above it works better if the sun is far
outside Lara’s world to give it a “global” appearance, and
because I have occupied the X-coordinate with the condition
about the line from the gate, I am only able to impose this
on the Y-coordinate. I choose to use the global coordinate
twice the size of the level editor window: Yglobal
= 208896.
Now the LensFlare-command is:
LensFlare = 208896,Z,33792,red,green,blue
I have decided that Lara does her swims early in the
morning, so the sun is still low in the sky and has a bright
yellow colour. And this is where some trial and error gets
into the picture.
It is fairly easy to decide the colour setting. I think that
the colour (255,255,128) gives the bright yellow I associate
with early mornings:
LensFlare= 208896,Z,33792,255,255,128
Then there is the height, which takes the mentioned testing
to find the best suited result.
If you are prepared to use trigonometry, it is undoubtedly
possible to decide a specific height the lens flare should
have at a specific block – just like in the “private
sun”-example I suggested in the Playable Tutorial Level
above – and then calculate the Z-coordinate when the lens
flare position is twice the distance of the level editor
window away. But that must belong to very special situations
– like the lens flare seen through a portal.
The height of the lens flare might depend on what obstacles
are around the area where it is supposed to appear. A level
with high walls or rocks will demand a higher lens flare to
get a good view than a flat level (by the beach or in a park
like mine).
After some trial and error I settled for a Z-coordinate at
–60000, which is high enough to shine through the part of
the horizon, where the sky scrolls by and down above the
stone fence around Lara’s park, but low enough to peek
through the grates at the top of the fence and make an
impression of an early morning:
LensFlare = 208896,-60000,33792,red,green,blue
Here is the final result:
Good morning, Lara!
By the way: the LensFlare-command is amazingly stable when
you think of the many weaknesses the editor has. The levels
worked every time in spite of my experiments, where I tried
out both negative coordinates, no Layer1-command even though
I had a sky, two lens flares in the same level (no, it
didn’t work) and three Layer-commands (no, that didn’t work
either). I never encountered any conversion or load problems
– the TRLE simply adjusted to a usable version of the script
and happily worked on.
And now to the things which must be done in the level itself
to make the lens flare work.
How to set up a global lens
flare – the level part
If you haven’t already done that during your planning of the
lens flare and its coordinates, now is the time to select
the rooms the lens flare must be visible in - or to think
about it if it should be visible in other rooms other than
the primary ones.
The lens flare in its full glory is only visible in rooms
set to outdoor and only if the adjacent rooms are also set
to outdoor. Always, always remember that!
To do that you press the O-button (O means outdoor) in the
plan view panel.
If you don’t, you will get a pale lens flare (just a sun
disc) and all your calculations of global coordinates have
no effect on that.
I spent a whole week re-calculating my coordinates and made
about sixty different versions of the script while I became
more and more frustrated over a gorgeous lens flare in some
rooms and just a pale version in others. And all I had
needed to do was to switch the outdoor setting on in those
rooms!
The outdoor setting is very important to remember in
rooms Lara is never going to enter, but sees the lens flare
through – such as rooms working as “horizons” (made to
give an impression of more land around the rooms Lara moves
in) or “skies” (rooms above with building roofs, treetops or
similar).
In the picture below I have switched the outdoor setting on
in the ground rooms, but forgotten it in the rooms above.
Near the gate the sun still shines as it did in the picture
of the final lens flare, but as soon as the line of
visibility goes through one of the top rooms, the lens flare
turns pale.
Water rooms are a story of their own. They can’t have an
outdoor setting because the editor makes it an “either this
or that choice” – if you press one button the other switches
off. Fortunately for the beauty of Lara’s morning swims in
her park, water rooms are affected by the setting of the
surrounding rooms.
I haven’t found out precisely which rooms must be set to
outdoor to make the sun shine through the sides in a water
room (I have set them all), so this is a bit of a trial and
error. But to make the lens flare shine down through the
water surface, it just demands an outdoor setting in the air
room above it.
I have used this to send Lara into outer space just for the
fun of it (sorry for her lack of appropriate clothing, but I
don’t have a wad containing a space suit, so I just have to
rely on her superwoman abilities
):
(It is the same park with a swimming pool and the same lens
flare as above - I have just made everything transparent,
set the colours in the Layer1-command to (0,0,0) and changed
the horizon from Angkor Wat to a TR3-horizon which I had
coloured all black.)
But I haven’t yet figured out how to make a full lens flare
shine into a water room from below. No matter what I did, I
only got the pale lens flare.
And then there are the outdoor rooms, where the lens flare
should not be seen.
The lens flare has no problem penetrating the first layer
it encounters - walls, floors and roofs.
My park level is very small and the stone fence is the limit
of it all the way around. The lens flare goes right through
that:
I tried to make the wall dense by raising the outermost row
of blocks – the lens flare went through anyway. It also went
through anything wafer thin inside the level, including
portals with toggled opacity and opaque textures.
The same happened when I experimented with a lens flare
below zero level. This time the lens flare just shone up
through the ground.
This means that you might have to switch the lens flare off
in rooms that have a wall directly into the void outside
your level if you want to set a low lens flare in an area
with a steep landscape. But I suggest you test your level
first. Maybe another room cuts in between the lens flare and
some of your “outer rim rooms” and if that’s the case, the
lens flare might respect the walls it meets.
To turn the lens flare off locally in outdoor rooms press
the NL-button (NL = No LensFlare) in the plan view grid.
It’s the neighbour to the outdoor-button.
Other aesthetic considerations may also have something to
say. In the level I am building I have a hall with a broken
roof. It looks nice when the noon sun shines into the hall
from the hole in the roof:
But less nice when Lara looks up at the sky near the
remaining part of the roof:
All the glory of a lens flare comes off and only the sun
disc is left when a dense construction gets near the line of
sight.
This is a situation, where turning the lens flare off is the
only right solution – but that’s of course in the eye of the
beholder (i. e. the level builder).
Even though the lens flare is able to penetrate the outer
box of a level, it behaves more naturally when it gets
deeper into the rooms. After all we don’t see the sun shine
right through walls and roofs in the real world, so the lens
flare doesn’t do that either.
Deeper in the level rooms the lens flare is stopped by
any block with a density – this means pillars, walls
made of blocks and roofs and floors made of lowered/raised
blocks.
I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or well planned by the
level designers, but in Desert Railroad the roofs of the
train wagons are shaped a bit by raised blocks, and Lara can
climb in and out of the wagons without seeing the sun in
strange places.
How this can be used to make Lara run back and forth between
a sunny day and a gloomy building is completely up to the
individual level builder.
The lens flare position is somehow connected to Lara’s
position
The lens flare seems to adjust itself to Lara’s whereabouts.
Poetically spoken the sun always turns its face towards her.
It might be a part of making the illusion of an omnipresent
sun more realistic. But if you use a fixed camera and have
the lens flare in its view you may see the lens flare move
around when Lara does.
Depending on the setup, this behavior may not be noticeable
at all or it may ruin a great sequence. So check things out
in game and be prepared to make adjustments if it is a
problem for you.
This is about all it takes to make a lens flare. Roughly
speaking good planning is the most important thing. But
there are a couple of things which have the potential to
make the use of a lens flare a tricky business.
Troublesome issues
Height versus distance
When the X- and Y-coordinates change they also affect the
apparent height of the sun. I’ll try to show what I mean
with a couple of triangles and squares:
The thick line is the limitation of how far Lara can see.
And in each triangle the vertical line represents the
Z-coordinate, the horizontal line the overall distance
between Lara’s position and the lens flare position and the
sloped line Lara’s line of sight to the lens flare. If you
double the distance between Lara and the lens flare and keep
the same Z-coordinate you halve the height at which the sun
appears when seen in-game. So to make the sun appear at the
same height after doubling the distance between it and Lara,
you must also double the Z-coordinate.
That is the reason behind the different Z-coordinates in my
“quick lens flare lines” at the beginning of this tutorial.
Because the distance between Lara and the lens flare changes
with both the X- and the Y-coordinate, I had to adjust the
Z-coordinate.
Therefore it is simpler to work with a lens flare along one
of either the X- or the Y-coordinate. That way you have
“locked” one of those two coordinates and just have to keep
an eye on what changes you make in the other and change the
Z-coordinate accordingly.
You will have to be more aware of it if you make a lens
flare along a line which slants through the level and uses
both the X- and Y-line to get in place.
Lens flare colour versus
sky\horizon colour
The lens flare colour is affected by the colour of the
horizon, the sky and the Layer1- and Layer2-command.
This particular situation confuses me since I haven’t been
able to figure out what influences the lens flare the most.
I tried all the skies that came with the editor and the
according Layer1-commands on a white version of my early
morning sun and could barely see any change - even with the
sky and colour from City of the Dead (and that takes place
during the night so a lens flare is not likely to appear
there):
But strongly coloured horizons seem to make a difference.
The following pictures are all made with a white lens flare
(255,255,255) in a script where I had deleted the
Layer1-command, so the difference in colour was caused by
the horizon (a TR3-horizon) only:
This could cause trouble for those who use a
TR3-horison and a strongly coloured lens flare. But I am not
able to say anything of the degree of the problem.
Personally I think the black sky/horizon reveals the lens
flare colour better and I recommend it while testing which
colour you want to give your finished lens flare. And a test
is easily done by setting the Layer1-command to (0,0,0) and
putting the lens flare so high in the sky that it doesn’t
touch the horizon (if you use a TR4-horizon).
The "recipe" on how to set up a
custom-made global lens flare
The script part:
1. Choose the compass direction the lens flare must shine
along and be careful about the southern and western
directions.
2. Pick one or more blocks lying along the desired compass
direction and calculate the global coordinates for the lens
flare based on their (X, Y)-coordinates. Think about the
magnitude of the distance and what it might do to the
perception of height and world corner.
3. Choose a lens flare colour – some testing in a black sky
might be a help.
4. Test the height of the lens flare and be careful about
its ability to shine through the outer walls of the level.
The level part:
1. Turn the outdoor setting on (the O-button in the plan
view panel) if you want the full lens flare and remember to
do the same for those rooms Lara isn’t meant to enter but to
see the lens flare through.
2. Test the level to see if there are places where the lens
flare passes through walls and similar or if too many solid
blocks make the lens flare flip to and from the full glory
and the pale sun disc and turn the lens flare off in those
rooms (the NL-button next to the O-button)
Other ideas and crazy
suggestions for use of the global lens flare
The global lens flare may be used to give an object a
“glory”. Idea by George Maciver.
In this case you have to be very precise with its position
and height.
The formula for calculating the global X- and Y-coordinates
based on the X- and Y-coordinates from the editor are:
Xglobal = (X-coordinate from the
editor + 1) * 1024
Yglobal = (Y- coordinate from the editor + 1) * 1024
They are the coordinates for the top left corner of the
block (the red dot on the picture below).
So to get the coordinates for the centre of the block (the
blue dot below) you have to add half a block to the formula:
Xglobal = (X-coordinate from
the editor + 1.5) * 1024
Yglobal = (Y- coordinate from the editor + 1.5) * 1024
And to get the coordinates for the bottom right corner of
the block (the green dot) you have to add one (1) block to
the original formula:
Xglobal = (X-coordinate from
the editor + 1) * 1024
Yglobal = (Y- coordinate from the editor + 1) * 1024
These are also the coordinates for the top left corner of
the block diagonally below (the purple one).
I will leave you to do the math for a side of the block if
that is where you want to place the global lens flare.
Furthermore the lens flare will appear 16 clicks above zero
if you use Zglobal = 0. So to get the lens flare down into a
precise height you must subtrackt 16 in the formula:
Zglobal = (height in clicks
(must be examined closer and forget about any negative sign)
– 16) * 256, and add a negative sign to the final value, if
the height is above zero level
The remaining adjustment of the global coordinates is a
matter of trial and error depending of what you want to use
the lens flare for.
Let us all bow to worship Lara the Great!
The pale lens flare is also usable to set a mood
I changed
the season and Lara’s outfit in my park level and turned it
into a grey winter day:
However the pale sun disc doesn’t work very well with a
scrolling sky because the clouds go behind the sun.
In this case a TR3-horizon might be the better choice. And
neither the Fog-command nor fog bulbs had any effect as to
“cloud” the sun.
Of course I had to turn the outdoor setting off to get the
above effect, so Lara’s ponytail/braid was lifeless; but
maybe this problem can be circumvented by enclosing the
outdoor room(s), where the pale lens flare must be seen, in
a series of rooms with no outdoor setting to block the line
of sight to the lens flare and thus cause the pale sun. But
I have done my share of experiments and leave that to level
builders who want to work more with this effect.
The global lens flare works fine in tandem with the local
one (the object). They can even appear in the same room.
It’s not possible to have more that one global lens flare
in a level. When I tried, the TRLE just picked the first
LensFlare-command and used it even though I had given them
separate numbers like the layer-commands.
This is what I have worked out. If you discover or know
something that might be of use, please contact me. I am a
frequent visitor at Skribblerz
(www.s10.invisionfree.com/skribblers) and will be happy to
update this tutorial with new information on the global lens
flare and ideas as to its use.
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