I will have a drop ceiling in my layout room for different light combinations. I would like to have dusk-to-night ops so what lights should I use to get this effect.
Thanks
Depends on how far you want to go. You could have daylight lighting, ie. bright, possibly directional light, and night lighting- either NO general room lighting, or dim possibly blue-ish lighting, with building lights etc. providing the illumination, and have a gradual transition between the two. One possibility for the night effect is to have some area lights from an overhead projector that actually seems to be coming from a source in the scene. That may be as much as you need to get the effect of day and night as far as OPERATIONS.
If you want to make a “big show” of the transition, you might want to have bright day lighting all white and have a transition with the white lights dimming slightly, adding some red and or orange for that late afternoon low sun, make a “lap dissolve” dimming the whites at the same time that you bring up blue lights, so you are mixing blue and red for a purplish sundown, then fade the reds out and finally maybe even the blues to little or no room light.
I have not done this on a layout but I have done it in stage lighting. I saw someone who had a layout with day-to-night effects, and during a layout visit, they sequenced it day to night asnd back again. But do that too much or too often and you lose the sense of time and instead get a gimmick.
As I said, I have not done it, but I plan on doing it on layout now being built.
Can’t find my visualization rendering, maybe I need to re-upload it…
Computer visualization: operators view of Island Seaport passenger terminal at night
Computer visualization: scale passengers view of Island Seaport passenger terminal at night
Created in Laser Lightwave 3D.
For night opps, it definatly helps to have the layout well lighted. But a simple trick is to get a blue colored night light and use that for “moon” light. It wont take long for your eyes to adjust but can really help find your way. Its huge help for people visting.
Take a trick from the theater. If the room is lighted with dim blue light, or not at all, put some low-intensity lamps close to the floor in the aisleways.
Special effects are interesting and fun, but safety is critical.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - 24/30)
I use standard blue incandescent lamps to simulate night ops:
I don’t bother with the transition between day and night. I either run a daylight session or night session.
Nick
You can put some of your white lights on a dimmer and slowly turn them down while turning another dimmer up on the blue ones!
It’s more than just the lights in the sky, it’s the lights on the ground that really make it pop.
For the room lighting, I have two banks of track lights, each on it’s own dimmer. I take them down till there’s just a faint glow in the bulbs, and let the layout structure and exterior lighting do the rest.
Lee