SlamTilt's table Lighting

[Slippery Jim]

Has anyone else been following SlamTilt's seven day challenge to build "Predator"

Day one he got this achieved

I have asked this before but never got an explanatory answer. My question is this, how does he make his tables so dark, and the room dark? And how does he get the light so sharp, and shadows? Is it scripted or something in BAM, or both? unfortunately he doesnt reply on youtube

 

[GeorgeH]

The only thing I noticed is he added some shadow maps. The rest of the lighting looks pretty standard to me.

I have not had much luck adding shadow maps to a table from the BAM menu. When I try to add them that way, the whole table turns dark and it is worthless. I just add some existing code to the script. A good place to start are the settings I used on Indiana Jones (linked below). Search the script for "xBAM.ShadowMap". You normally want to leave "Reflection" set to 0 or you can get black artifacts on the ray casting. The brightness settings depend on the color and how dark the playfield is. There are some playfields where shadow maps don't show up very well. As a last resort, you can try adding white light but I would exhaust the other settings first. An example of a problematic table is "Medieval Castle" that I just updated. The dark brown playfield texture doesn't support shadow maps very well. You can't even see them on the slingshots but you can see them shining out from under some of the other plastics. You might notice that I violated my own rule about not setting "Reflection" to 0, mostly because the ray casting doesn't work on this table even though I added it to the script. If you have questions, I will do my best to answer them.

Williams - SS - Recreation - BAM - FizX - FP - Indiana Jones, The Pinball Adventure (Williams, 1993) (Color DMD, SSF, 3 Monitor Setup, FizX 3.3)

Note: The file size of the download was originally too large to upload to this site so the contents were divided into three files. Indiana Jones, The Pinball Adventure v2025 A.7z – This download has the files needed for most desktop users. It...

pinballnirvana.com

 

[phéromones]

In my opinion, I'd say that, like George, he probably uses the Bam menu to control the desired lighting effects. He then uses a "Sub" routine to get multiple types of lighting at the desired time. It's probably even possible to load the shadow maps with an Xbam command. Anyway, I follow his channel too.

 

[xenonph]

Notice at beginning of Video, he says he started with Lethal Weapon table for this mod.
I may have to try modding a future pinball table one of these days.
Looks like fun!

 

[GeorgeH]

Notice at beginning of Video, he says he started with Lethal Weapon table for this mod.
I may have to try modding a future pinball table one of these days.
Looks like fun!

I guess I didn't notice that. He most likely just carried over the same settings he used on Lethal Weapon for this table.

If you want to learn, I am willing to help you. You might start by reviewing my advanced guide. I started out by making small adjustments to improve things I didn't like on tables I played and added what I learned to the advanced guide.

 

[TerryRed]

He is simply using a preset for BAM Lighting settings, and then adjusting the brightness of all table lights (inserts, bulbs, etc) using BAM commands as needed to make all lights brighten to match the darker BAM global lighting. Then he adds a few hidden flashers for G.I. (global illumination) to light up the table.



With your table loaded, goto the BAM "Lights" menu, and use these settings as a starter.





The goto the "Post & Pre Processing" menu and make adjustments there. You can have Src Gamma at the default 2.20 if you want, but I like to set it to 1.00 (this makes everything darker, and requires the entire table to be adjusted to match with it).





When you have made the adjustments you want... then highlight a section in either Lighting or Post / Pre Processing and press CTRL+C to copy those settings to the clipboard. Then you can paste them in your table script.

Sub SetLightsParamsInBAM()
   xBAM.Lights.EnableNewRenderer             = TRUE
   xBAM.Lights.MainLightLock                 = TRUE
' --- SetMainLightPosition not used because MainLightLock = FALSE
'  xBAM.Lights.SetMainLightPosition                 0,   1000,   1500
   xBAM.Lights.SetMainLightProperties               1,   0.35,      1,  0.025
   xBAM.Lights.SetMainLightAttenuation              1,      0,      0
   xBAM.Lights.SetOtherLightsAttenuation        0.066,      0,  0.333
   xBAM.Lights.EnablePostprocessing          = FALSE
   xBAM.Lights.SetPostprocessing                    1,      0,      1,      1
   xBAM.Lights.SetPostprocessingForNewRenderer      1,      0,      1,      1,      1,      1,      1,      1,    0.5
   xBAM.Lights.BallReflection =    2.5
   xBAM.Lights.BallShininess =    400
'  xBAM.Lights.BallSpecular =      1
End Sub

That is your BAM global Lighting set. Note, I recommend using a 1 second timer to call SetLightsParamsInBAM in the table script on table startup to ensure these settings are always applied on startup. This WILL make everything on the table much darker... so you will need to adjust all the other lighting and textures to match this better.


You need to add whatever other lights you want to the table. I typically use 4 hidden flashers for G.I. (x1 in each sling, x1 in the drain, x1 in the top of the table somewhere). These flashers will need to be adjusted for their brightness as they are too bright by default for G.I. Other flashers are usually fine at their default brightness / settings, unless you need something more specific.


I create a GI_ON and a GI_OFF sub to control and turn on / off all the lighting. These need to be called whenever you want them to turn on and off the general illuminated lighting on the table (the bulbs under plastics, the flashers you added for GI, etc)


You can also add shadowmaps to the G.I. bulbs on the table which also act as lightmaps. They can help to brighten up the table as well. Shadowmaps are also needed if you want to enable raycast shadows for any bulbs. How to add them is another topic.


To give you an idea of how that all works, look at examples on tables like MOTU CE. The commands I use for all lighting and textures adjustments are in sections that are labelled for lighting, flashers, GI, etc.