Skateball (Bally 1980)

Early Bally toolkit build notable for clear insert rendering with visible bulbs and practical Blender troubleshooting. Built by mcarter78, apophis79, and friscopinball.

Table-Specific Details

Art & Visuals

• Transparent amber inserts where the bulb filament is directly visible through the insert. Reference photos from real machines confirm this is the original design intent (some owners install "yoppsicles" or wheel bearings to mask the bulb).
• Layer separator material: when separators appear visible in renders, append the correct layer.sep material from a known-good blend file (File > Append > Materials > layer.sep).
• Plastic refraction thickness: high values (10) visually distort nearby objects (kickout saucer appeared egg-shaped). Thickness 3 provided accurate visuals with minimal loss of refraction effect.
• GI bulb placement: bulbs placed very low (0.15" from playfield) throw less light. Make GI lights larger (roughly double typical size) to soften shadows. Dial GI with world light off so HDRI does not wash out GI contribution.
• Indirect light clamping accidentally zeroed out in Blender render settings caused inserts and posts to appear dark/spooky.

Known Issues

• Nestmap "expected Image type found Image" error is memory-related. Closing Chrome, Discord, and other memory-hungry applications before running nestmaps can resolve it.
• Spinner primitives: one side should be rotated 180 degrees from the other along the rotational axis for correct dual-sided animation.

Techniques Developed Here

• Clear insert technique for visible bulb inserts documented here
• Lamp/solenoid detective tool -- "All ID in 1 Visual B2S" used here for identifying unknown assignments

See Also

• Insert Lighting -- insert types and construction
• Troubleshooting -- Blender toolkit errors