You may have noticed I've been merrily loading RM's vivid SCG freebie RE2 sets into Poser, wrangling masks etc to give the sets' luminaires 'natural' lighting for fun renders...

And you may have noticed several days have passed without a fresh post to the gallery...

Well, I've hit a hard one. RE2 "Room 115 STARS office" has a few desk-lamps and bulkhead lights, for which I've ambiance masks.  Problem is the ceiling, which has six luminaire panels, some ducting supporting them as 3+3 and a 'riser' wall-duct. All on the same RE2 texture. So, if dialled to 'super ambient', all the ducting etc lit as bright as the lights...

Okay, I'll just mask it...

Um, remember the problems I had mapping the eye-textures mostly right for that 'MLP' render ? This began harder, got worse...

I managed to copy/paste ducting +lights out of the main OBJ, and they still recognised the texture. But, mask as I would, the ducting 'leaked' and lit, spoiling the look.

I tried several UV mappers and 3D editing programs, could not split out the luminaire panels from the ducting yet still have the latter accept the texture.

After converting their OBJ to 3DS and studying it in classic Draw3D, which offers vertex XYZ lists, I realised the luminaires were shallow boxes, but the wall and ceiling 'ducts' were flat. No wonder I'd had problems.

Upside, this meant the ceiling 'ducts' had a common 'Y' height ~ 3.8, which was different to the luminaires' top and bottom 'Y' heights of 3.36 + 3.34, which were very different to the wall-ducts' top + bottom 'Y' heights of 2.70 + -0.02...

So, just by looking at the lights + ducts OBJ in eg Notepad, I could pick out which was what.

All I had to do was add a few mtllib + usemtl calls to divert the luminaire panels to use eg lightmap_white.jpg which appears in several scenes...

Yeah, right.

Of course, the panels came up white, but the ducting did not call their texture...

After a weary hour on hottest day of 2021 to date, I had to leave it, go eat. Made a picnic of sliced roast-chicken and chilled beetroots, pre-steamed. Still had enough chicken to eat well after cats stole several slices while I drained the mini-beets...

Wasn't the first I'd seen of those cats today, not quite: But, suddenly, swoosh, bounce, gone...

Cats will be cats...

The texturing ? I'm going to save what I've done, have a pint of tea then go soak my head...

Cats are sneakier than dogs, gotta watch them around those delicious sandwiches! I hadn't realised that separating & calling the textures would be so complex , I wonder if there's a simpler way ...

I think I screwed-up the test OBJ's external calls.

Seems an OBJ shall have only one (1) MTL, even if referenced multiple times...

So, I shall carefully craft a new, combo MTL, sanitise the test OBJ and try again.

This is what I should have tried first, uh, first after the failed masking, but no, I tried to be toooo clever.

I blame the heat...

It was so hot yesterday that, with kitchen door wide open to catch gentle breeze, a dozen flies had got in and were zooming around like ebon foo-fighters. I've a rechargeable fly-zapper, but those flies were dodging my swings with ease. Then I accidentally caught one on back-swing.

CLICK !!

Within a minute, all the other flies had scooted out of the door into the garden...

Kitchen does have an industrial-strength fly-zapper with twin 15 Watt 'blue' tubes. But, of course, it greeted start of UK heat-wave by dying. I'd cleaned the grille, changed the tubes etc etc, but no luck. Ordered same model from Amazon. It arrived late yesterday, much sooner than expected, and minus a 'heads-up' e-mail. Got me out of wash-room, of course, of course.

Surprise, NOT identical. Other had chain-hangers and wall-mounting key-holes, which latter I'd used. This only had the hangers, so needed new wall fixings as would otherwise over-hang top cupboards' doors...

Solved, hung. Curiously, this version has 'trad' thumb-joint starters for its tubes instead of previous all-electronic system, which I reckon was what failed...

No, that didn't work. Nor did five variations. And I cannot see what's wrong. Have shovelled all 'experiments' and 'iterations' into a sub-folder entitled 'OFT' against future investigation...

And several more tries to UV map failed badly, very badly or hilariously...

Upside, hottest day of year (~30 ºC in kitchen) let me defrost freezer in half usual time. Appliance now chilling ready to refill from towel-wrapped heaps. Was -17ºC a few minutes ago. When reaches -20ºC, turbo-cooling will switch to 'larder' zone, which is currently hovering at 10º ~~ 12ºC.

FWIW, I've fitted a couple of neat 15cm braced-brackets to fly-zapper's original mounts, got a palm-width of stand-off distance. This has significantly increased 'knock-down' rate...

Yes, I used a #4x25mm wood-screw to stabilise each bracket, plus an M4x25mm nut+bolt at each outer end to prevent hanging chain escaping...
     

- - -
'OFT' = 'Oh, F** This'. Been a while since I invoked such....

I reckon I can use the luminaires'  lower vertex coordinates --Bottom level of their boxes-- to make six flat 'sheet' objects that I can put into Poser scene just below those wretched 'light-panels'. Texture and dial these 'sheets' to 'super-ambient' as light panels...

So I would not be changing the originals' OBJ / MTL etc etc in any way, and they'd not need masking. Just copy/paste into eg free Notepad...

That did not work, either. And, again, I cannot see why...

Needed a nap to clear migraine...

But, after back-tracking and again trying several free or budget 3D editors, I accidentally found how to delete vertices etc in Blender. (BFA fork.)
{ Mutter, mutter, ijit UI, mutter, mutter... }

So, I took the lights + panels + strip that I'd previously extracted, ripped it back to just the six shallow 'cuboids' of the luminaires. Saving them as an OBJ, I used find/replace in free Notepad to tweak 'Y' coordinates. Moved them down just enough to clear the originals, re-saved.

With the main scene OBJ loaded at ~25% original, I soon masked its desk lights and bulkhead lights, dialled them to super-ambient etc. I loaded in the modified luminaires' OBJ at same scale. Used XYZ translate to align just below scene's luminaires.

I made the room door transparent to get a fair camera angle, ran a test render and cheered.
         
Full render currently running on 'Box'...

It is a win. Even if took injury time, extra time, a 'tactical substitution' and penalties...

Thank you kindly Nik !

"classic Draw3D"... is this a Corel product ?

"It is a win. Even if took injury time, extra time, a 'tactical substitution' and penalties"...   It worked !

Free Draw3D v4.1.3 (July 2009) Shervin Emani

Reads only D3D, 3DS, ASC, 3D and CSV. But, has a very, very simple, user-friendly and remarkably nimble UI, plus more tools than you'd expect...

Thank you kindly Nik, I just checked it out now! Wow, it's really light weight, nice, compact & capable !