Lighting, Translucence

[Fletch]

The PNG images were saved as "Indexed Color" format.
Change them to RGB format, save, and replace them inside your model.
They should render fine.
This was discovered when trying to save them as .jpg and the option does not exist for .jpg as indexed color.

[Fletch]

the whole balloon can be light emitter, that's fine.

[irenaeus]

The buttons have returned, by the way. I may even know why. It was not Twilight's fault.

This is troubling me though: the patches are still solid colors. ALSO, Twilight insists on copying their source images to my AppData\Twilight\Temp folder and using those as the images for the textures.

Material Editor insisting on AppData

screencap_r10_material_editor.png (21.8 KiB) Viewed 9400 times

The status as of now is no surprise - based on the material preview in the shot above. The logo patches are green.

They glow nicely, but they're still solid colors instead of the graphics I imported as textures.

STEnvQcamR11_s1_v3.jpg (36.16 KiB) Viewed 9399 times

I see your note about having the entire envelope an emitter. Great! Thanks for that.

[Fletch]

no, Twilight's not copying it.
Twilight is just keeping the "old" image path.

Try browsing in the Twilight Material editor to the new .jpg images or new rgb format .png files, that should solve it.
Make sure that in SU the path is also to the correct RGB format .png or .jpg logo image.

[irenaeus]

no, Twilight's not copying it.
Twilight is just keeping the "old" image path.

Try browsing in the Twilight Material editor to the new .jpg images or new rgb format .png files, that should solve it.
Make sure that in SU the path is also to the correct RGB format .png or .jpg logo image.

Well, whatever it is doing, it is absolutely insisting that this image be in appdata/roaming/twilight/temp. Here's what I mean:

1) I go to the projection plane where I imported an image as a texture. I reimport it, from a file in a folder on my desktop, which is local at c:\users\me\desktop\folder, just to be sure we're working with the proper file. We are.
2) to make double sure, after the import is done, I then ALT-bucket in sketchup to check the material, and then go edit the material to make sure that the file is right, browsing to make sure it's the right one. It is. It's in a folder on my desktop.
3) then I make the material projected, position it, ALT-bucket it again, then bucket the material onto the logo patch I've described before.
4) then I bring up the material editor on the material in that logo patch by clicking on it as an eyedropper.
5) the image under texture shows as being in AppData. Fine.
6) so I click on browse. It shows me the appdata folder. I delete everything in it.That is, while I am passing through, I delete all files present in that folder.
7) I then browse over to the folder on my desktop. There's the file I want to use as the texture image. I click on that.
8) for a second or two the name is correct in the texture box left of the browse button.
9) then the name suddenly changes without my doing a thing. It is now in appdata/roaming again, and the png/graphic has reappeared there.

I found that if I simply were to copy and paste the entire path for the graphic into the texture box, it still changes before my eyes. It's quite remarkable really.

This works for either of the two patches I am dealing with.

Further note, in case it helps: I am not using folder redirection, nor am I using offline files.

I would love for any advice or suggestions here.

[Fletch]

Sorry to hear of the challenge here. I too had a tiny challenge trying to get rid of the 'bad' image.
I had to purge the scene first, then re-insert the image, explode it, then browse the mat. texture in the Twilight Material Editor to verify that the path was correct. It worked.
If you browse in Twilight's editor for an image file, and load the image that way, it should not look in app data folder any longer. It only looks there if it's grabbing the image from the SU file. My best guess is because you have not purged the file of the original bad guy, when you are inserting the new texture, SU is somehow clinging to the old one, and therefore feeding it to Twilight.

Here is what I did:
Delete both logos from the scene.
use purgeall.rb and be sure that the scene is completely purged of the 'bad' image.
Using SketchUp Insert function find your RGB format logo.
insert/place, explode.
Now, using Twilight mat editor check preview of the texture after applying emitter property template, it should work fine.
If not, browse using Twilight's 'color' browse for texture button to find the correct texture and load it.

[Fletch]

The buttons have returned, by the way. I may even know why. It was not Twilight's fault.

Can you explain further, please?

I would isolate Twilight by:
close sketchup
renaming current plugins folder to "plugins-work"
creating a new folder in google sketchup folder called "Plugins" and
re-install Twilight from the .exe file, or copy all Twilight-related files from the original Plugins folder and pasting them into the newly created "plugins" folder.

Now run SketchUp, you should only have one plugin, Twilight. It should work well. If so, now you can copy other plugins back into this newly created 'clean' plugins folder a few at a time, restarting SketchUp each time to see if any of them are causing trouble with Twilight. You should be able to, using this method, isolate the plugin that is conflicting with Twilight. It will likely be another rendering plugin, or some other more 'complex' plugin in comparison with the standard 'mirror.rb' type of plugin. It is likely a plugin with a graphical user interface.

[irenaeus]

Here is what I did:
Delete both logos from the scene.
use purgeall.rb and be sure that the scene is completely purged of the 'bad' image.
Using SketchUp Insert function find your RGB format logo.
insert/place, explode.
Now, using Twilight mat editor check preview of the texture after applying emitter property template, it should work fine.
If not, browse using Twilight's 'color' browse for texture button to find the correct texture and load it.

Excellent. Thank you. I am trying it now.
One or two things seem different in this process. I'll mark them with a *.
1) logos deleted
2) purgeall run successfully.
3) I create a rectangular surface to use as the projecting plane (having deleted the previous)
4)*I use File -> Import with setting "Use as Texture" (is this what you meant by "Sketchup Insert function"?)
5) I click on the face of the projecting plane and lay the texture/image across it
6)*I don't have to explode. The option to explode is grayed out.

I'll keep going from there and report in a moment.

Addendum 1: I see that you do need to explode if you import as image. So I'll go back and do it that way.
Addendum 2: It's still not working. Let me try to give full details.
- did all above (steps 1-6), with the minor modification that I changed to 'import as image' so I could do an explode, which I did.
- started twilight material editor.
- clicked on the newly-imported and newly-exploded image.
- it shows up as sitting in C:/users/(me)/AppData/Roaming/Twilight/temp/lfsplogo.png.
(I keep changing the name a little in case that might help)
- ran purge all again. nothing purged, as you might imagine.
- I applied the light emitter 100 watt/m^2 template.
- I ran purge all again just in case. nothing purged.
- The top row (color) of the twilight material editor shows 'texture' on the left and, as I've already noted, the logo in AppData.
- I click on browse and browse to the place where the image is sitting - a folder on my desktop.
- I select the image. The proper name and path show up in the box next to Browse.
- A few seconds later it changes to AppData again.
- the preview on the bottom of the twilight material browser still shows this as a solid green surface.

I suppose it should be clear, but in case not - I don't care where the file is. I don't care where Twilight thinks it is, or puts it. I just want it to render! And this does somehow seem related.

ONE MORE thing - I have checked on this computer and mine is a local profile, not roaming. I mention this because the twilight temp file is showing up under AppData/Roaming/Twilight, which does strike me as odd. I see that many other applications are using that area though, so maybe that's normal.

** YET ANOTHER THING! - I created an entirely new user account, blank profile, etc, set it all up and tried everything here. The file name is still jumping into the profile.
I hope all this info helps. In the end, as I think I said, I don't care where the image/graphic/material is stored. I just want it to render properly!

Twilight Material Editor detail

TwilightMaterialEditorAppDataDetail.png (21.72 KiB) Viewed 9365 times

[Fletch]

Sorry to hear of all the troubles...
Have you neglected the main step here? Which is to save your PNG file as a RGB format png, currently it is either indexed color or CMYK.

image-mode-RGB.png (44.89 KiB) Viewed 9343 times

Here's the "fixed" file attached with the correct image files loaded.

fixed.zip

(837.56 KiB) Downloaded 444 times

Here it is, rending just fine.

logosRGB.png (39.08 KiB) Viewed 9342 times

[irenaeus]

Sorry to hear of all the troubles...
Have you neglected the main step here? Which is to save your PNG file as a RGB format png, currently it is either indexed color or CMYK.

Dear Fletch - that was the fix. Thank you so much. It is all working now as expected.