Nightlighting can be setup by using Omni lights in 3ds Max. The exporter will export their instances and associated settings for you. For optimization you will probably need to group various physical lights in the scene together and have them only use a single physical light in game. There is a limit of 20 lights casting on each object.

For objects to receive light from Nightlights they need to have been exported with "Omni" enabled. Additionally ensure that meshes are not clustered together such that they cover an area of more than 20 omni lights.

There are 3 physical parts to the lighting.

Setting up Omni Lights


Setting up Post FX


Track Light example mesh UV, shader settings, and mapping. In this texture you can set different intensity and different color temperatures. For a nice touch, just set your track omnilights RGB colors, same as the texture area you pick on the texture.

The intensity will need careful testing and adjustment.


Track Light example mesh, export settings.

Be sure to give the glow objects an accurate lod out, remember at night they can be seen from very far away.



Track Light example SCN code (the Instance for the glow mesh must have same suffix name as the first omnilight in the scene (in this case NightLight001);

Light=NightLight001 
{ 
  Type=Omni Pos=(15.029381, 9.138912, -406.351288) Range=(0.000000, 40.000000) Active=True Intensity=(4.500000) Color=(255, 238, 193) 
} 
Instance=NightLight001Glow 
{ 
  MeshFile=NightLight001Glow.gmt CollTarget=False HATTarget=False
}