Glow textures?

[spiritplumber]

http://www.spiritplumber.tzo.com/BZTron/tronguy1.PNG

how's it look? I'm trying to replicate the tron "glow", but I'm not sure how to use glow textures... what do I do with them exactly? Do I have to "call" them when the msh gets generated?

Please help!

(that's without the glow texture btw)

[Zero Angel]

the trick is to use the filenames. For example if your model is referencing a texture called isdf00.pic than the isdfc0.pic will be the glow texture that is overlayed on top of the regular texture.

whatever00.pic tends to be a normal texture
whateverc0.pic is a glow texture
whatever00_bump.pic is a bumpmap texture

You shouldnt have to modify the ODF or XSI files, simply create a 32-bit image (32-bits means it has transparancy) and save it as whateverc0.pic

For an example, take a look at my ISDF teamcolor update for 1.3 which uses glow textures to mask the 'normal' colors when the ships are recolored in multiplayer.

[spiritplumber]

thanks!

Is it a0 or c0?

[Lizard]

a0 is what you want

c0 is for multiplayer team colour skins ( basically a white version of the normal skin that a colour overlay can be applied to ) .



a0 and c0 work in conjunction in multiplayer, if an a0 skin is present the alpha channels in the a0 texture are used to override the colouring on the c0 skin to give the effect of selectively applied team colours.


so it goes like this :


myskin00.pic - regular skin

myskinc0.pic - teamcolour skin

myskina0.pic - glowskin

and you can also have

myskin00_bump.pic - regular bump map texture

myskinc0_bump.pic -  multiplayer team colour bump map texture

myskina0_bump.pic - glowskin bump map texture .


in 1.2 you need to specify the glowtexture name in the ODF under [GameObjectClass], for example from the scion scout :

glowTexture = "fvscoua0.pic"


in 1.3 ken fixed it so that the game auto detects glow textures in the same way that it does teamcolour skins, so you no longer have to specify the name in the ODF.


not confusing at all is it .......

[Dianoga4]

So Lizard, are you saying that in 1.3, if I have a model with the texture named "body.pic" for example and the model works and looks good and all that. If I simply add another texture called "bodya0.pic" to the same folder, the game will automatically know to use it for a glow texture? And does this work with other formats like .png and stuff?

Dia

[Commando]

I would use body00.pic.  Then bodya0.pic for the glow texture.

With your setup, boay.pic might be the glow texture.  The next to the last character determines the glowtexture.

Sorry dump typo.

body.pic = Regular Texture
boay.pic = GlowTexture

The placement of that a is very important.  The next to last character before the . must be an a.

[Avatar]

Um, do you know how glowtextures are set up?  How to make one?

In case anyone reading this doesn't know...

Glowtextures work with an "alpha channel".  You need a paint program that supports alpha channels, some have been mentioned in other threads.  You also need a texture format that supports alpha channels.  PIC does this, as does TGA.  If you use TGA don't use the compressed version.

Let's say you want everything blue in your texture to glow.  You'd do whatever is necessary to see the channels of your texture, the Red, Green and Blue parts of the texture.  (RGB, see?)  Then you copy the Blue channel and name it "Alpha".  The paint program might name it "Alpha1", that's OK.  It'll also be grey shades, which is OK.

You'll notice the blue areas of the texture are brighter than the rest in the alpha channel, but that you can still see the other colors as greys.  That's because most every color has a little of each in it.  You want to black out everything but the Blue areas in the Alpha channel.  Everything else should be black, so that all you're seeing is a grey version of the blue in the texture.

That's it.  The engine will make anything other than black glow, and it'll glow brighter the whiter the alpha channel area is.  Name the texture XXXXaX.TGA or PIC and you're good to go.

-Av-

[Dianoga4]

Thanks Avatar and Commando, this will come in handy.

Dia

[spiritplumber]

Thanks!!!!


This should probably be made a sticky somewhere... thanks for the info, I get the tron glow a lot better now!


In single player, can I activate the teamcolor skin? (I have a lot of units that are the same other than their glow is red or blue)

[Avatar]

In MP it's a console command...  game.teamcolors toggles them.  I don't think it does anything unless you're in MP... but it might be a DLL thing. 

-Av-

[Lizard]

Thanks!!!!


This should probably be made a sticky somewhere...

I agree, if there are any other threads that are of value like this, if someone points me to them I will make those sticky aswell.

[Avatar]

Ack...  I'd have typed prettier if'n I'da kno'd that... 

Instead of sticky-ness maybe there should be a chapter about such things in the most excellent Modlog? 

-Av-

[Dianoga4]

Finally got these to work and figured out what I was doing wrong lol. I was trying to use a bitmap as the regular texture and a tga as the alpha one and it wouldn't let me do that. I tried using png's for everything on the model and it worked. I used Blender to make the glow texture and it worked great. I don't know how to do crap in Photoshop and PSP but Blender got the job done.

Dia

[simon]

That pilot looks good but maybe you could get him to lose the helmet and show his face like in the movie make a helmet for him
like the one he wore in the movie you know the one that glows.


Sorry I had to post something unrelated to the topic but this is the only topic with that picture uploaded so I couldn't think of
anywhere else to say this. All I can say about your texture glow problem is good luck with the textures.

[Red Spot]

perhaps a bit slow but just to clear on it ...

what I'm making from this is that I basicly by using sort of a "dark/light" texture as skin and than a (kinda)"all apha" as glow texture can make 1 race look very diff. when teamcolors are applied?

basicly meaning like you now have that the ISDF go "all" red or blue I could make "only" the orange part go red/blue and leave the grey/etc exactly the same?


G