[Unknown Target]

I was wondering if it would be possible to add glowmaps as seen in Bridge Commander? Because (no offense), right now, it looks as if the textures were simply brightened, because they don't cast any actual light....

[Lynx]

Have you checked out the Hyperion Heavy cruiser of TBP? This shows perfect glowmapping. It appears that parts of the hull are lit up by somekind of spotlight, but it's just glowmaps. If you make windows just white blobs, they sure look crappy, but if you add a slight glow around them, they appear to cast light on the hull. It's just a matter how good the glowmaps are.

Or do you want them to cast light onto other objects?

[LAW ENFORCER]

that would be a good idea... actual head lights

[Unknown Target]

I'd like a dynamically casted light (NOT light textured).
Oh, and actual headlights would be very kool too

[Goober5000]

I think you can use glowpoints for that.

EDIT: FYI, glowpoints and glowmaps are different things.

[Taristin]

I just used glare in PSP to make the indows look like they glow...

see? (This was in TS, but it's the same method as the FS engine uses...)

[FreeTerran]

Cool how have you make the glow lights in truespace ?

[Unknown Target]

Looks good, but still not QUITE BC. For instance, those windows don't cast any light on the parts of the ship around it

[Bobboau]

you can make glow maps that look like that

that is why glow maps are described as a version of the texture that is unlit, the texture artist is responsible for ensureing that the secondary iluminations are done corectly

[Taristin]

Originally posted by FreeTerran
Cool how have you make the glow lights in truespace ?

I cloned the body of the fenris and replaced the tesxtures with the glow maps and a black filter...

For the BC look, you'd have to add a slight white glow to the textures around the windows. It'd be a pain for tiled textures unless you editted the pof.

[Bobboau]

you should use the alpha chanels, there better looking and working

[Taristin]

How do you mean? I'm saying it like texture the surrounds of a window, and the panels horizontal to it (  |--> __  )  the same texture, just named differently so you could put the -glow tile on it, and have a glow spot for the window's lights...

[Bobboau]

I was talking about you're TS rendering method, rather than useing two models one with a filter transparency, you should use one model and aply multable layers of each of the shader chanels, though it would require diferen't maps as you have now

[Taristin]

Oh, I tried something like that, it didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped.

I layered the texture with the glowmap, but it only made the surroundings darker, and the windows still looked lame. This was the easiest way I found to do it, just had to make the coned shell a bit bigger than the original...

Edit: Oooh, ok. I re-read... do you mean a seperate red, green, and blue color texture?

[Bobboau]

basicly invert the colors of the glow map and apply them as I think you did and it should turn out better, in TS's alpha chanels darker means more

[Taristin]

Oh. I did not know that. I'll try it after I try your specular build.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
Looks good, but still not QUITE BC. For instance, those windows don't cast any light on the parts of the ship around it

that can be done with just more work on the map.
on the case of the fenris, they're just windows, they won't cast light around them on the hull anyway.

[Taristin]

Hush, it's supposed to look cool, and it does.

...and I can try to explain it off as either slighly recessed windows, or a slight fog in space that you can barely detect. So

[Nico]

Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
Hush, it's supposed to look cool, and it does.

dunno, depends. to keep going on with the fenris exemple, I prefer to see only the windows, and no hull around. it's more moody, I think.

[Flipside]

I create glowmaps by getting the main texture, turning brightness right down, and contrast right up. Edit out the unwanted highlights and then applying a glow filter to what is left, it seems to work well most of the time

Flipside