[Topgun]

I am trying to make one by baking a animated matrerial in blender, but I can't find a way to do this.

[Snail]

You use AniBuild (or ACANI) to make an .ani file, then you just name it <texture>-glow... I may be wrong, but AFAIK that should work.

[Galemp]

ANI glowmaps are horribly inefficient and they look awful to boot. Don't use them.

What you need is a texture for each frame of the animation, numbered in sequence. Say, 'texture-glow_0000.tga' 'texture-glow_0001.tga' and so on.

Then you need to write an eff file that tells Freespace how to render it. Call it something like 'texture-glow.eff' and have something like this in it:

Code: [Select]

$Type: TGA
$Frames: 32
$FPS: 80
Then you should be all set.

[Topgun]

yeah, I know that. but what I mean is, how do you make the texture for every animation?

[Droid803]

yeah, I know that. but what I mean is, how do you make the texture for every animation?

exactly like how you make any other texture?

Btw, aren't DDS's textures better than TGAs?

[Topgun]

I am not going to make 50+ frames of the same texture with just 1 layer increasing and decreasing in value.

[Hellstryker]

You have to AFAIK 

[Cobra]

I am not going to make 50+ frames of the same texture with just 1 layer increasing and decreasing in value.

You'll have to make a lot of textures for one frame if you want it to be smooth.

[Topgun]

I am trying to make one by baking a animated matrerial in blender, but I can't find a way to do this.

there has to be a way to do it. someone help me out please .

[Droid803]

It's not that tedious to change a value, hit save, change a value, hit save, fifty times. It doesn't take as long as you would think (alright, maybe it does, but its not that hard).

[JGZinv]

If you can get a hold of SmartMorph (old ancient freeware) or have a version
of Flash or Adobe Image Ready (comes with PS) then you can auto generate the frames
you need rather than have to em all by hand. Most animated GIF or image utilities might work too.

What you do is take let's say a deck light, you have one image with the light off and one
image with the light on at it's brightest. Then you'd create (depending on program) what is called
a tween - and have the program auto generate the images in between the two source images.

The take that and export the big batch of resulting image/frames as some individual image format like JPG
or BMP that you can convert to what everyone else is telling you to do here.

You can swap the patterns of off and on light with additional tweens to make off/on effects and flashing.

[Water]

Animated Procedural Textures in Blender
Second from last
http://www.cogfilms.com/tutorials.html

Also Proximus has been used to generate frames
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,45334.0.html
But you may need some math to work it. 

[Topgun]

Animated Procedural Textures in Blender
Second from last
http://www.cogfilms.com/tutorials.html

I know how to make procedural textures but I don't know how to bake them.

[Water]

I'm not sure why you would want to bake them. Saving the animated texture to a file and then separating out the polygons to a new object and re-uv to use that map would be better. Or am I missing something?

[Topgun]

Saving the animated texture to a file and then separating out the polygons to a new object and re-uv to use that map would be better.

I don't understand what you mean by that.

[Nuke]

it would probably be more efficient to make only a partial animation, then use scripting to change the frames around. that way you don't have to store as many frames.

most glow maps on shivan ships simply ramp up and down ad continuum . this effect is not only rather boring but also really inefficient. if you were to script the effect, you could get away with only having half the frames, the effect could ramp up, then the animation would run in reverse for the ramp down. you could take it a step farther and occasionally ramp up half way on a random basis, which would add a bit more variety to the effect.

taking it a step further i believe its now possible to generate rtt glowmaps which would be generated with script on the fly. this reduces the texture count to 1 (plus any other maps you may use as elements which are rendered into the glow map).

combine either meathod with glow points you can make even more effects.

[Topgun]

I don't know lua

[Getter Robo G]

If it helps, here is the animated glow map for TREK Red bussards (Created by Omniscaper).

I'm hoping to get better ones made in the future for Green and blue warps if anyone is interested in helping(?)...



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[Nuke]

I don't know lua

neither did i