Alpha and Glow

[DemonWulf]

Our game production Team has ran into a dilema. We have many creatures and plants that are bioluminescent (glow) and have thus far ran into the problem of figuring out a way for the models to both utilize an alpha map for transparencies and self-illumination.

If we could have it our way, we would have Diffuse, Alpha, Normal, Specular, and Glow, but have ran into problems so far.

Does anyone have any advice, tricks, or knowledge of how they could possibly get this to work? Is it possible to change any of the programming to get it to work?

Thank you for your help.

 

[Sanada]

Unfortunatly, I don't think you can have illumination (glow) and alpha trasparency in one material. You can only have either one of them at a time. Unless there's a secret command that allows you to use the normal map alpha channel for something other than specular then there's no way real way to do it. Specular maps can be called externally from a seperate VTF but the others can't. :|

You can use a bit of trickery to get it to work but it's not very pratical. You basically need to seperate the transparent parts with the illuminated parts and assign one of them to another material. That way you can both on one model but it might not work in all cases. I had to use this way for one of my models and it works but was a pain to implement.

 

[Shinobi]

nevermind, I thought I had the answer butI was wrong

 

[DemonWulf]

Was what you did for a character or prop?

 

[Sanada]

It was a prop but it shouldn't make a difference either way. They both use VertexLitGeneric so all the same rules will still apply.

 

[Dodo]

you can have an alpha and the glow in one material, just look in the .vmt of the crosshair of the reflex scope in the smg1 model. Its all about how you stack them in youre .vmt

-dodo