Q: I was wondering if there was anyway to make an animated self illuminated light in 3ds4. Something like going from the light completely turned off to going full blast... like an engine powering up.

A: 1) You can render an animation that goes from black to white: Place a pure white plane if front of a camera, set the ambient light and omni lights to 0,0,0 on frame 0, then go to the middle frame, set ambient light and any other lights to 255,255,255. Copy the keys from frame 0 to the last frame. Render the animation. You get a whole screen that changes its color. Place this animation (flic?) into the Self Illum. slot in the material editor.

2) You can use Autodesk Animator: take a black screen animation, a white screen animation and use Cross Fade to go from black to white. Then reverse the animation and join to the first. Use it like in 1)

3) You can use the Vary.sxp to change from black to white, but I believe it is not loopable. I am sure I read about a similar SXP that is loopable.

4) You can have two versions of the engine with two different materials - one with self.illum., one without. Use Morph/Texture morphing.