Q: I want to add two strips of small rectangular lights to a flat rectangular surface.These lights are the type you see on ships such as those in Babylon 5 ( the Minbari cruiser wings ).I created a map which has a row of small white rectangles running along the top and bottom of the map.The rest of the bitmap is black.I applied this ( In the reflection map slot ) to a plain red phong surface in the materials editor which when rendered in the me gave me a ring of my white windows at the north and south poles of the sphere-I was able to change the colour of the windows by using the specular colour ( everything ok so far ).When rendered as a cube though, the windows were no longer present.I applied this surface to a flat cube, a sphere and a cylider in the 3d editor as a test.Only the sphere produced the windows when rendered.I don't want to use self illumination as this is not producing the necessary whiteness I need that the sphere did.Surely it must be possible to produce these white type windows via the reflection map slot as the sphere seemed to work.

A: I assume we are talking about 3DSr4. (in MAX the procedure would be similar, but not identical)

A reflection map works really only on curved surfaces. You have to drag&drop the same image on the Self.-Illum. slot - all the windows will become self-illuminated, but with the basic material color. You can use the same map as a texture map AND mask image for the texture map. In this way the windows will be white, and the rest will have the basic colors of the material.

If you want a nice texture like on a real B5 ship, you can do the following:

1)Put the ship texture as Texture 1. 2)Put the "Windows" B&W image on the Mask for Texture 1, click on the [S] and use Negative. 3)Put the "Windows" B&W image on the Texture 2. 4)Drag&Drop the same image on the Mask slot for Texture 2. 5)Drag&Drop the same image on the Self-Illuminating slot.

(6) You can use the ship texture from Texture 1 as a bump map,too! Copy both the Texture and the Mask from Texture 1 into the Bump slot and set to about 5-10%. The ship's surface will become bumpy, but not the windows...

Addition:

It is also possible to have two textures in both Texture Maps slots AND the lighted windows:
The basic diffuse color will be the color of the windows. Both textures should have the windows image with Negative as Mask.The normal windows image comes into the Self Illum. slot.