Creating Light Areas

How to Create Lighting for your Zaby 

This tutorial is to help decorators learn to understand and use the lighting scripts in the prop editor correctly. This was written by someone else and unfortunately I forgot to put who.

STEP ONE:
Create a trigger box and scale it to encompass the space you wish to fill with light.

STEP TWO:
Set script to “Create Light Area.” As soon as you set the script, your avatar and any props (provided they are not unlit) will go black, this is because the “Ambient Color” of your lighting area is defaulted at 0,0,0. Those numbers represent the value of the three primary colors: Red, Green and Blue! If you are not familiar with RGB color values or how they work - it’s pretty simple. The value ranges from 0-255. If you set all three numbers to 255, you will get the brightest white light possible. Experiment with the values to find a ratio that you like, or look on my blog for a list of common colors and their respective ratios.
You may choose to use the “Directional Color” option. This basically creates a unidirectional light that moves in whichever direction that you choose by manipulating the three directional values - which you sort of have to mess with to understand

STEP THREE:
(optional)
Now that you have created your light area, you may want to create a small light source such as a lamp, that spread light Omni-directionally. To do this you must first give your light area a name. Under the script tab on the trigger box you scripted to “Create Light Area” there is a blank line where u may name your light area. Once you name your light area, you may script props to “Create Light” within the light area. 
Create a prop, then set the script to “Create Light.” You will see a line under “region” where you can enter the name of your light area - enter the name of you light area and your prop will now be creating light within that area. Next you will see options for color and intensity. Enter the RGB values you wish the light to be. Intensity is defaulted at 100, but can go as high as 10,000.

Advanced Lighting:
Now if you have mastered the techniques described in the three steps listed above, you may have more questions then when you started. Such as “why do these props that are clearly inside the light area not take light?” and “why did I learn this? Now it will take me even longer to finish a deco project.” Sad to say, I can only really help you with the former question. 
Lots of times you will notice that a few props will not be effected by your lighting, but with a few advanced techniques, they will eventually bend to your will. The most common (and most easily remedied) fault is that the prop is simply “unlit.” That’s the first thing to check, under the State tab (hopefully you knew that by now). Another reason may be that the prop is extending out of the light area by some amount that it is considered “out” of the light area. Not to worry, just set the “Create Light Area (Extended)” script to that prop, and type in the name of your light area. If the prop STILL does not take light, it may be because that prop is overlapping some other prop. Sadly if props are overlapping too much they may not take lighting no matter what you do (as far as I know! If any decorators have more experience then me in this area I would love to read comments regarding.) 
You may notice that a prop is taking lighting, but is not the same shade as identical props, or is just too dim or bright for your liking. This problem is easily solved under the State tab. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see a few boxes. The three you will be interested in are “Emissive, Ambient and Diffuse.” Emissive is defaulted at 0 and increasing it will make your prop brighter. Ambient and Diffuse are defaulted at 255 each, and decreasing them will make your prop darker. “when to use which one?” you ask? I’m not really sure the technical details behind it, as all my knowledge is through trial and error. And you will just have to mess with them till the prop looks right. 
I have noticed with some props that their angle to the light source will affect how the light is cast upon them. For example: a sign prop facing a light source takes the light just fine, but if you turned it 90 degrees so that the thin edge is facing the light, the wide main “face” of the sign takes no light. I have found that in some instances this can be solved by setting the “Z” axis of the sign to its lowest setting 0.01.

Emissive, Ambient, Diffuse and Fade States: 
At the bottom of the State section, there are 4 values now available: Emissive, Ambient, Diffuse and Fade. 

Ambient controls how much of the base (non-directional) lighting to apply. By default, this is 255 (max), which means all the non-directional light applies. 

Diffuse is how much of the directional light is applied. Also 255 by default, this is the light that changes on objects as you move them around a room, based on where the lights are defined in the map. 

Emissive is extra light. It's also non-directional, but it allows you to make a prop brighter than what it could achieve with ambient + diffuse. Setting Emissive 255 is basically the same as setting Texture Unlit (it'll show up at full brightness). 

Fade increases the transparency of the prop. Setting it at 255 will make the prop invisible; the prop will fade increasingly as the number goes higher. Note that this causes substantial lag: if possible, it's better to fade the prop map in a graphics program and apply a transparent texture rather than using the fade tool.