ok question on blending

(pigg221462) #1

I was reading this webpage about blending
http://simland.planetquake.gamespy.com/pages/articles/terrain1_1.htm
now my question is how did they blend the textures for fueldump. i know about the shader and was woundering how they got the different textures to blend into each other. I painted my map with 3 of the differant textures 0to2 0to3 and 1to1 i think. For the most part they blend like 0to2 blends with 0to2 and so on with 0to3 and 1to1 but where 0to2 is next to 0to3 they don’t blend. Did they use a alphamap or not. I decompiled fueldump to look at the terrain brush and it was just a regular brush with no referance to a alphamap. anybody got any ideas

(Aborted) #2

Fueldump doesnt use the dotProduct2 blending. Its all in the .shader file. Have a squz through that and you’ll find your answers.

Also, you can only blend 2 textures together, not 3. Quake3 engine limitation.

(pigg221462) #3

am i just placing the wrong textures next to each other or something. in the shader there is a lot of terrain textures like terrain1_1 terrain1_2 terrain1_3 ect. then there is terrain1_0to1 terrain1_0to2 terrain1_0to3 then terrain1_1to2 terrain1_1to3 and so on and so on. SO my understanding would be that terrain1_0to1 blends with terrain1_0to2 am i right or way off lol. so confusing

(DerSaidin) #4

Alpha fade textures basicly have 2 layers, the alpha is applied to the second.

dotProduct2 blending means that when you compile, the alpha at each vertex will be decided by the direction vertex normal in relation to your other parameters.

Another way to select the alpha of each vertex is using alphaMod volume shaders, heres teh ones I used in my map

// ======================================================================
// alpha fade shaders
// (c) 2004 randy reddig
// http://www.shaderlab.com
// distribution, in part or in whole, in any medium, permitted
// ======================================================================
//
// These shaders are not fixed to this directory location, they can
// be moved around. They exist here for convenience only.
//
textures/dersaidin/alpha_000	// Primary texture ONLY
{
	q3map_alphaMod volume
	q3map_alphaMod set 0.00
	surfaceparm nodraw
	surfaceparm nonsolid
	surfaceparm trans
	qer_trans 0.70
}

textures/dersaidin/alpha_001	// Almost Primary texture ONLY
{
	q3map_alphaMod volume
	q3map_alphaMod set 0.01
	surfaceparm nodraw
	surfaceparm nonsolid
	surfaceparm trans
	qer_trans 0.70
}

textures/dersaidin/alpha_025
{
	q3map_alphaMod volume
	q3map_alphaMod set 0.25
	surfaceparm nodraw
	surfaceparm nonsolid
	surfaceparm trans
	qer_trans 0.70
}

textures/dersaidin/alpha_050	// Perfect mix of both Primary + Secondary
{
	q3map_alphaMod volume
	q3map_alphaMod set 0.50
	surfaceparm nodraw
	surfaceparm nonsolid
	surfaceparm trans
	qer_trans 0.70
}

textures/dersaidin/alpha_075
{
	q3map_alphaMod volume
	q3map_alphaMod set 0.75
	surfaceparm nodraw
	surfaceparm nonsolid
	surfaceparm trans
	qer_trans 0.70
}

textures/dersaidin/alpha_085
{
	q3map_alphaMod volume
	q3map_alphaMod set 0.85
	surfaceparm nodraw
	surfaceparm nonsolid
	surfaceparm trans
	qer_trans 0.70
}

textures/dersaidin/alpha_100	// Secondary texture ONLY
{
	q3map_alphaMod volume
	q3map_alphaMod set 1.0
	surfaceparm nodraw
	surfaceparm nonsolid
	surfaceparm trans
	qer_trans 0.70
}

Any alphaFade vertexes which are inside a brush that has those shaders will get that brush’s alpha applied. I believe alphaMod volume overrides dotproduct2.

Another problem you might find, is that the it isnt blending very well. I followed that tutorial and had the same problem.

See how it doesnt fade out very well?

I eventually discovered that its caused by this line:
alphaFunc GE128

I believe that this means the alpha has to be greater than or equal to 128 to be considered white, else its black. Or something along those lines with teh colors reversed perhaps. Higher contrast anyway.

Gl