Heya you skilled level-designers out there,

I'm looking for a method to create a coloured, self-glowing texture to apply it to patch meshes. Later on it shall look like a "Coca Cola" oder "Budweiser" neon light ad as you can see it here: Link. What do I have to do for this? Shaders? Scripting? Textures? Please help. I hope someone can lead me the right way

Thanks in advance
sincerely
Sgt. Skywalker

You must search in PK3 files.... They are map files from objective models that glows....Maybe it's helpfull

that wouldnt work, as what you are describing is an fx light source (i know because i tried to create dynamic lighting and the problem i encountered was that the fx light illuminated the entire brush

what you COULD do would be to create a texture with what you want to be illuminated in an alpha channel (the writing) so it would be clear...then put that texture on a no-draw brush and make a hollow box with that brush on one side....place a light entity (colored or white) insode and you have a faux neon sign

stryder,

big thanks for your reply. your description gives me some "inspiration". i will "experiment" with your tip.

but what's about the objective models? they seem to have kinda pulsating glow. do you know the technique behind it? maybe that's a hint for further investigation.... i'm not sure about it.

cheers
skywalker

the pulsing models is just an fx light source inside of a model....
create an fx (obviously just a light) and locate it inside a model
then just loop the fx, with a slight difference between the fx life and your loop time to make it pulse

hi stryder,
i did not succedd with your tip on fx. i also studied the shader manual for the q3 engine again and found the keyword "q3map_surfacelight". i created my own shader but it doesn't seem to work although my syntax is correct. it seems cod can't handle it.
so now i use the simple way by just creating some light entities placing them close to my object. it looks quite okay.
what do you think of this?


so long
Skywalker

lol makin a red light district?
looks good

lol,
yeah man, you're right. I'm living in Hamburg, Germany. A famous harbour city near the north sea with a "beautiful" and very famous redlight district called "Reeperbahn". I'll see what i can do

cheers
Skywalker

uhm!.. is there anyway you could dumb down how to this this a bit plz..

rasta,

my first ideas have been much too complicated. forget about self glowing textures light in q3. it won't work as CoD doesn't seem to support the shader keyword "q3map_surfacelight".

but.....
you can just place a few light entities in front of your object and play a little with the value for the "light" keyword. i'm using a light value of about 50 and i'm placing the entities about 20 to 50 world units away of my object. just depends on how big the light radius should be. give it a neat color with the color picker tool (key "K") and voilá :casanova:

and...
be careful with the number of light entities in a small area. it seems, CoD can not handle very much light sources in one portal leaf. place your light wisely :angryalien:

cheers
skywalker