Glowing Textures - Developers

I'm working on porting the ARS Suit from Vanquish, and I noticed that the textures that came with it do not have the glowing lights like they do in the game. Does anyone know a good way to go about this???

[QUOTE=Kokurokoki;44624845]I'm working on porting the ARS Suit from Vanquish, and I noticed that the textures that came with it do not have the glowing lights like they do in the game. Does anyone know a good way to go about this???[/QUOTE] it does with selfillum in VMTs. if the lights for the VMTs are different, then it should go like this: [CODE] $selfillummask "whatever the basetexture path is" "$selfillumtexture" "whatever the basetexture path is" "$selfillum" 1 "$selfillumtint" "[21 1 1]"[/CODE] of course, the selfillumtint can be modified, it adjusts how bright it is afaik. for example, it should go like this: [CODE] $selfillummask "models/Balder/Angel/bayotex001" "$selfillumtexture" "models/Balder/Angel/bayotex001" "$selfillum" 1 "$selfillumtint" "[21 1 1]"[/CODE] hope this helps!

[QUOTE=Ageha;44626194]it does with selfillum in VMTs. if the lights for the VMTs are different, then it should go like this: [CODE] $selfillummask "whatever the basetexture path is" "$selfillumtexture" "whatever the basetexture path is" "$selfillum" 1 "$selfillumtint" "[21 1 1]"[/CODE] of course, the selfillumtint can be modified, it adjusts how bright it is afaik. for example, it should go like this: [CODE] $selfillummask "models/Balder/Angel/bayotex001" "$selfillumtexture" "models/Balder/Angel/bayotex001" "$selfillum" 1 "$selfillumtint" "[21 1 1]"[/CODE] hope this helps![/QUOTE] I tried it but not dice. I think it has something to do with the fact that the texture itself doesn't have any selfillum on it. I looked around the valve database, and it says for selfillum to work you need to prepare the alpha channel for that. How would I go about preparing the alpha channel for this?

[QUOTE=Kokurokoki;44628902]I tried it but not dice. I think it has something to do with the fact that the texture itself doesn't have any selfillum on it. I looked around the valve database, and it says for selfillum to work you need to prepare the alpha channel for that. How would I go about preparing the alpha channel for this?[/QUOTE] some of the models I have, like Father Balder, have a selfillum that has no alpha. here's the thing -- in GIMP 2.0, I have a program that converts an image into a VTF. There's a ticker box that comes up, and one of the ticker boxes says something along the lines of 'Alpha', you wanna tick that. That basically tricks the VTF there's alpha, I think. I can get you the app used to convert images to a VTF: [url]http://registry.gimp.org/node/24882[/url] Hopefully this'll help you, it's how I've been doing it for a while.

Oh! Well, thanks for that, Rinfect.

The way you guys are trying to do this seems a little weird to me. By default, selfillum does indeed use the alpha mask, but you can also use a separate mask. A separate mask is usually not really necessary unless you already occupy the abledo's alpha channel with something for another shader (excluding transparency). If you're able to make an alpha channel, white areas glow and black areas do not. If you need a separate mask, you can do what Rin showed above but the same principal applies where colors are not necessary. Illumination in Source basically just tells a part of the diffuse map to be fullbright or "unlit." The actual mask is grayscale and I'm not sure opacity or brightness really make a difference. Using $selfillumtint only darkens the material and increasing the values passed 1 only brightens it -- by that I mean it just pushes the diffuse black or white, but it doesn't actually change the "brightness." As far as the actual texture goes, you can apply it over in Photoshop or apply it in real-time using a $detail mask. This is really only necessary if the lights are separate from the diffuse map; Unreal does this with emissive shaders.

[QUOTE=Rinfect;44629165]you actually need a separate self illum texture. just black out the stuff you dont want to glow, thats what i do anyways. example: [IMG]http://puu.sh/8l4Ta.png[/IMG] example ingame: [IMG]http://puu.sh/8l5dp.jpg[/IMG] [code] $selfillummask "fuck/420_d" "$selfillumtexture" "fuck/420_illum" "$selfillum" 1 "$selfillumtint" "[1 1 1]"[/code][/QUOTE] Would you have to UV map this texture? Or can I just copy-paste a VTF and then edit it as a .tga and then turn it back into a VTF? Also, can you just make simple shapes, or do you have to align the textures you want glowing to the base texture exactly? I'm still new to editing textures so I still have a lot that I need to learn.... D:

If the model is just a port, you probably don't need to touch the UV map. If the original model had lights then chances are it has an emissive mask or at least something equivalent to Source's alpha mask. If the lights are in a separate mask already, you can overlay them in whatever photo editing program you use or you can just use a $detail mask. If they're part of the diffuse map already, you just need to find the alpha mask that came with the model or make one. If you make your own, you can pretty much just make a new layer and paint right over it. Once again, Source doesn't have any fancy emissive shaders (though you can cheat a kind-of-sort-of-similar effect by using bloom). White means fullbright (unlit -- it's a light, it glows) and black means it's pretty much the same as usual.

Yeah Lillwasa's port of Sam Gideon didn't have glowy bits either. I tried to make some illumination textures, but it's really hard to figure out what goes where.

[QUOTE=lonefirewarrior;44635864]Yeah Lillwasa's port of Sam Gideon didn't have glowy bits either. I tried to make some illumination textures, but it's really hard to figure out what goes where.[/QUOTE] That's because Lilwasa didn't port the model directly from Vanquish. He used a XNALara model that was honestly a very poor port by someone. Thankfully it came with all the pieces of the in-game model, which has allowed me to be able to repair the model to be accurate with the game. I've already managed to make a diffuse texture with the lighting on it. Now I just need to know how to get the damn thing to glow... :( [IMG]http://oi60.tinypic.com/og9836.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://oi60.tinypic.com/2h6u8pk.jpg[/IMG] I'm currently working on on fixing up the model and giving it bodygroups so that it is 100% accurate to the canon of the game. Hopefully after that I can mess around with the vertices and build a female ARS suit.

If you have the split diffuse and emissive textures and send them to me, I'll see if I can make a quick alpha mask for you (or at least show you an example).

Detail blend mode 5 baby self illums too overrated

[QUOTE=CaptainBigButt;44636695]If you have the split diffuse and emissive textures and send them to me, I'll see if I can make a quick alpha mask for you (or at least show you an example).[/QUOTE] Alright. I'll send them to you.

Still can't figure out how to do it. The closest I got was getting the whole body to glow. But not the glowing textures themselves. I've tried applying the the emission into the alpha of the diffuse, but all I get is a black body with the glowing parts illuminated. How would I do this in GIMP? It seems like photoshop and GIMP are doing this differently.... :/ EDIT: Nvm I think I fixed it. Gimp seems to invert the the masks by default. I dunno why it does this...

[QUOTE=Kokurokoki;44645792]Still can't figure out how to do it. The closest I got was getting the whole body to glow. But not the glowing textures themselves. I've tried applying the the emission into the alpha of the diffuse, but all I get is a black body with the glowing parts illuminated. How would I do this in GIMP? It seems like photoshop and GIMP are doing this differently.... :/ EDIT: Nvm I think I fixed it. Gimp seems to invert the the masks by default. I dunno why it does this...[/QUOTE] Are you porting the other characters too?