First off let me say this is a great forum, and thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge!
I'm pretty new to modding, so far I've mostly just been making things shiny with alpha channels and txi files...and I made an albino Zalbaar. Heh heh.
Anyway, an effect that I'd love to use, but haven't been able to figure out, is the 'glow' effect like on the T-Visor of the Vacuum mask (and various parts of a lot of the other masks, for that matter.)
At first glance, it looks pretty simple. All that happens (I think) is that certain parts of the texture map are excluded from having shadows cast on them, so if you go into a dimly lit area, everything else is covered in shadow, but those parts aren't, so they appear to glow.
But...the glowing areas aren't defined by an alpha channel - the alpha channels in the mask textures are all blank. So, I'm at my wits end trying to figure out how the game knows which areas are supposed to be glowing. (I'm beginning to wonder if it might be defined in the mdl file somehow? And if so, whether that would make custom glow stuff prohibitively difficult?)
(By the way, I know there are some items, like the Light Exoskeleton, that use an alpha channel and 'envmaptexture CM_Bright' to get a glowing effect. However, that limits the glow to the color of the CM_Bright image, whereas the Neural Band, for example, has two different glow colors - the blue parts in front, and a couple red spots glowing on the top. I'd prefer to be able to use the colors in the texture itself as the glow colors, like the masks do...if it's feasible.)
So, if anyone knows how that works, I'd appreciate any help...Thanks!
- Steve
Greets! and welcome to the forums as well! :D
I'm not sure exactly how it's done, but svцsh was able to do it with his "Light of the Force" and "Fuel of Hate" masks.
http://www.angelfire.com/crazy2/xclone_0101/kotor_mods.htm)
you may want to PM him about it (though he may reply to this post...give him a little time first). That or "dig in" and dissect his mod to maybe discover how he did it.
In any case, if you should happen to use elements of his models, ask his permission beforehand and give him proper credit (as with any modder and their mods). He was kind enough to let me "hack away" at some of his skinz, and to date they're still some of my most popular mods.
Once again...welcome to the forums!
Its added into the model before export from max, To get the glow effect on a model you have to turn selfIllume almost all the way white Depending on how bright you really want it to be.
To do this you will have to import or make a new model, if you import the model then all you really have to do in blast selfillume on the Aurora trimesh. If you make a model, well you have to add the aurora trimesh and blast selfillume before you export the model.
Chainz - Thanks for the reply! The Revelation Robes are probably my all-time favorite mod, so I guess that makes me a big fan of you and svцsh. I did try to dissect the Fuel of Hate to figure it out, but wasn't really able to glean anything more than from the regular items.
T7nowhere - Aha! Thanks, I'll look into that.
By the way, your Verpine Implant Integration Visor rocks...chrome, transparency, glowiness, and animation, all on one item! (The chrome1 environment map thing is interesting, by the way...I'm still trying to figure that out. I don't think I've seen any default items that use that for a texture, and I've never seen any 'chrome1' image in the texture packs...and it seems to work differently when I try to apply it to different items. Sometimes it'll make the thing look like CM_Baremetal, and sometimes the thing it's applied to just disappears. Well, I'm workin' on it...)
- Steve
chrome1 is actually a game resource that is either not used by the game or used very few times. You can find it under bifs->legacy.bif
If you try to apply this shader to armor those results will probly happen. It should work on any item. I made a cm_baremetal version of it that I used For My lightsaber hilts which I also use to replace the defualt cm_baremetal.
If you want to know How any part of the Visor works just ask. :)