Adding glowmaps to models

Good stuff there Gibbon

Just perhaps one addition of note:
Et cannot be used on an animated texture. Ec can, but that’s only one color, not a map like above.

Edit:
Humph, well perhaps it only bugs when used on a mesh-within-a-mesh then. (shell with transparency, ani under)
I had left the animation values exactly the same as found in the nomad mothership, used on the walls there.
Texture anim works with DcDtEc perfectly, but change it to DcDtEt or DcDtEcEt and nada.
Had the same problem on another ship; texture in question here has alpha. DcDtEcTwo. Add Et into the mix and no animation. Same unchanged deltas.

Both use it on a mesh beneath another transparent textured mesh, which may have something to do with it.

Look at the cityscape cmps, there are alot of animated glow maps there. I have also successfully used it for an animated engine glow on the Sovereign.

That’s because your trying to animate two textures as one, the Dt tex & the Et tex, and from my own fiddling around with material animations, I found that FL just doesn’t like that. The reason the nomads work is that they don’t use “glow maps” as such, they use BtOcOtTwo rather than EcEt and call a “special animation” by using “nomad = true” in the shiparch.

“Ec” has two funtions, when used with a texture it acts like the Oc node and allows you to control the strength of the “glow”(if it’s missing FL uses the default (0.800000)). On it’s own it acts like the Dc node and is used to apply a “diffuse” color to the area, but because you have Ec or EcEt in the “type” FL gives it the default “glow” setting.

**By taking an example from ocean_green.cmp, you should be able to get 2 different textures to animate. I was able to get it to work with 1 texture or 2, looks better with 2 IMO.

Notice the red texture at the front of the nacelles, it is animated with 1 glow texture.

Create a MaterialAnim node in your CMP (not the MAT file), make this node attached to the root node ( \ ),
Create a new child node under this and give it a name you will recognize as the texture name. I use the texture name without the _lod1.3db

Create 3 more nodes under this new node, naming them
MACount
MAFlags
MADeltas

In MACount, set it to 1 for a single animation
In MAFlags, set it to 2 (texture shift)
In MADeltas add this
1.000000
1.000000
1.000000
1.000000
0.000000
1.000000
1.000000
1.000000
1.000000
0.000000
These usually come in groups of 5 floats, don’t ask me what they do, I’ve forgotten. I did this almost 2 years ago.

This should give you a sliding animation. Just remember, the entire texture slides so make sure your model is separated out properly.

Forgot to add this, under Cmpnd, you have to add a second MaterialAnim node.
Build it the same way as the one above with one single difference. The MAFlags should be 64 in this one.**

@Lancer:

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Mother…

I was hoping that was what you meant when you said Sovereign but… damn. That is a beaut!

MK

**Here is a full sized image…

http://www.galacticenigma.com/Pix/SovereignFull.jpg**

Thank ya gentlemen, more fun stuff to play with. Sorry for steering the thread a bit askew in the process.

Just read this one… what a nice guide thanks for sharing.

I take it you can use the same technique with starsphere models?

Also can you rename the .3db files exported by ms3d to .cmp for this purpose? Still to try it out but see no reason why not.
When I get time……

starspheres dont have “dark parts/shadows”… so why would you want glow maps there?

(to answer your question: yes you can create glowmaps there but they would look like the normal textures)

After the mission where you snatch the proteos tomb (sp…) and blow up Tekagi… I’ve always wanted to make Trent’s eyes glow similar to the shade of color on the ships I’ve cloned, retextured and added (not replacing originals) to game… I’m not very good with .thn’s or .ale’s which is how Tekagi’s eye, head and hands generate the effects during the Cutscene.

Since I’m no good at editting the arrays of long numbers, I was hoping I might be able to accomplish something similar with the pi_pirate5_head.dfm that trent’s character uses. I noticed there is already a glow map for the eyes, but no bright colors in it… just looks like a black 32x32 image (mip0). After changing it to a color similar to my ships, I recompiled the dfm with Freelancer XML Project… same way I extracted the necessary images by bulk.

After that failed to glow, I confirmed in UTF that the images did update in the texture library. Also confirmed the int array for Material Library\eyetealblue\Et_flags looks like:
64
0

Also string value for Material Library\eyetealblue\Et_name was already pointing to the tga reference in Texture Libraries that holds all the mip maps. Also confirmed, since there isn’t an Ec_??? in the file, that Material Library\eyetealblue\Type is: DcDtEt.

Still failed in both cutscenes and just normal character walking between bar/equipment room/ship dealer, etc… So I tried to apply a 60% opacity to Trent’s eyes, hoping the glow might shine through, but still nothing…

Can this method be done to the .dfm? or do I need to do it through the .thn’s using .ale references? Is it possible to place a hardpoint or “mount” a light in the head’s skull that would illuminate the desired color I’m looking for and shine through the, now, semi-transparent eyeballs? Also willing to try any other ideas to accomplish this feat other than manually editting .ale’s and .thn’s in notepad…