Rotating a dynamic light?

PogoP

Hey guys,

I'm trying to make one of those cliche, red, emergency lights that spin round, but I'm not quite sure how to go about doing it in UDK. I presume it's something to do with Kismet, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get this effect to work!

What I'm trying to do is figure out in UDK how to make a dynamic spotlight rotate round 360 degrees constantly. Does anybody know how to get this to work? Thanks guys

sprunghunt

PogoP wrote: »

Hey guys,

I'm trying to make one of those cliche, red, emergency lights that spin round, but I'm not quite sure how to go about doing it in UDK. I presume it's something to do with Kismet, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get this effect to work!

What I'm trying to do is figure out in UDK how to make a dynamic spotlight rotate round 360 degrees constantly. Does anybody know how to get this to work? Thanks guys

I would use matinee to animate it. It's pretty simple to do that kind of thing using matinee.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MatineeUserGuide.html

You can use matinee to make all kinds of environmental animations.

You'd rotate your actor once in matinee. Then set the sequence to loop and have it triggered off the levelloadedandvisible trigger. Or off an in-game event or something.

Oniram

in kismet create a matinee and add the light to it. set 2 frames and have it rotate and set the matinee to loop

tharle

might it be easier/cheaper to do it as an animated emmisive texture?

sprunghunt

tharle wrote: »

might it be easier/cheaper to do it as an animated emmisive texture?

It depends on how you want it to look. In some situations a texture might work ok. But an animated texture won't give a tight cone like a rotating spotlight does. And a texture won't affect actors that move near the object or project on complex geometry properly.

Camikaze

The easiest way to do this would be making use of the "rotation rate" settings in the properties of the object.

Place a SpotLightMovable in the scene, open the properties window and under the 'Movement' tab, set Physics to 'PHYS_Rotating', specify a rotation rate and you're away! Then it's just a matter of getting the rotational axis right, depending on the effect you're after.

Oniram

yup. thatd be the best way. completely forgot about that option.

PogoP

Hey fellas, cheers for the replies.

I got it working in Kismet but then realised that rotation rate works too, which would have saved me a hell of a lot of time haha! No probs, thanks guys.

Thanks for registering just to post that reply Camikaze! Nice one.

Camikaze

No worries mate, glad you got it all sorted!

dawnofwar19

Hey Guys,

I stumbled across this post because I'm having the exact same problem with rotating my spotlight. I have changed the physics to rotate, and chose the rotation rate. However nothing happens. What exactly am I missing?

dawnofwar19

Hey Guys,

I stumbled across this thread, and I'm having the exact same problem. I've tried doing two different things. The first try was simply rotating the light 360 degrees in a matinee sequence however no matter whether I did it on the local or world axis the light goes haywire shining all over the place. So instead I tried what Camikaze had posted on here. My only issue with that option is after I changed the physics to rotate and picked the rotation nothing happens. Any idea of what I'm doing wrong?

Hourences

Make sure it is a moveable version of a light actor.

Note you can only see it move in game also. Should work otherwise.

If the matinee one goes into all kinds of weird angles you need to enable Use Quat interpolation in the matinee itself.