Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

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Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by bjorn98009_91 »

Hi!

I attempting to import a street lamp mesh that I want to be turned on. The mesh itself imports fine, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to set up the textures so actually only the lamp portion of the texture is glowing. Any ideas?
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by ~DJ~ »

well.. I'm no expert but uh.. first off, the basic one, you should make the glowing part as a separate material/multiskin thing.
Next; use this tool called 'UnrealFX' (I'm attaching it)
it can open '.3d' files. Open up your StreetLamp_d.3d file (assuming the name ofcourse), and select the faces which have the Material of ze' Glowing part. The program has this 'Mat' sort/list thing, that's the thing you're looking for.
Once you've selected the faces of that materials (which you want to glow), click on the Edit button and press select Unlit on the effects thing, and apply... hope that helps. :oops:
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by bjorn98009_91 »

I actually have that tool. :) First I convert the .3DS file to the DX format using 3ds2de, and then I open the _d.3d file of my mesh in the program. Problem is that the mesh just shows up like a big corrupted blob. I'll try to reduce the polycount, but not really sure it would make a difference.
Last edited by bjorn98009_91 on Thu Mar 06, 2014 12:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by bjorn98009_91 »

Nope, doesn't have to do with polycount. I'm guessing that the program is made for Unreal's mesh format and not DX's. If so, then how do I use the program? I see that it's possible to import meshes into DX that's in the Unreal mesh format, but it's buggy. Looks weird compared to the DX-mesh format.

Any suggestions?
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by ~DJ~ »

Oh? the mesh display? it'll always show crazy, just don't look at it. You have to select faces like this..
check out this awesome best ever example picture thing thing! :oops:

Notice that I'm selecting the faces which have 'Mat' listed as '1', and 'Mat 0' are left unselected.
That is what I was talking about. You will have to know which Material of the model is for the glowing part.
DX only has Eight materials/multiskins possible per model. Here's an example for how to know the Material;
since you're importing the Mesh, it'll have an import like this:

Code: Select all

#exec MESHMAP SETTEXTURE MESHMAP=ZatPickUp NUM=0 TEXTURE=ZatTex0
#exec MESHMAP SETTEXTURE MESHMAP=ZatPickUp NUM=1 TEXTURE=DeusExItems.WeaponHandsTex
#exec MESHMAP SETTEXTURE MESHMAP=ZatPickUp NUM=2 TEXTURE=PinkMaskTex
The 'NUM=x' corresponds to the Material thing. I selected NUM=1 on this case.. which are for hands on my model.

EDIT: Also.. woops, forgot, there's a fifth step.. you have to save the file but yeah. :oops:
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by bjorn98009_91 »

Ah, but you see, I have the same material for everything. The light portion of the lamp is UV-mapped into the main texture. I'm guessing that's how the model is set up, and I'm not qualified to change that.
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by ~DJ~ »

Hmm, well.. I could think of two things..

a) Exporting the model as Unreal 3D file, which can easily open up in UnrealFX from which you can select the faces from the Mesh Viewer easily to apply effects. (Hold CTRL to select multiple faces)
Then, after applying the effects on the Unreal .3d file, convert the it to Deus Ex's by this tool.
for example, If you're using Milkshape 3d, export as 'Unreal/UT 3D...', then open that _d.3d file up from UnrealFX, this time it'll show up properly because the tool is for Unreal, as you guessed. Now we'd be able to select the 'faces' instead of the materials easily. For this I hope you have the model file.

b) You could upload the model here (with Texture)/PM me and I could separate them for you and tell you what to do, I don't suppose it would be hard.. :oops:
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by DDL »

If you can't open and modify the mesh in a nice easy 3D modelling program, the only other option is a dirty, ugly trick.

Have two meshes, one sliiiiiiightly bigger than the other. The first is your lamp post, the second is your lamp post again, but with a texture that is JUST the light portion, with the rest set to be masked. Make the second mesh unlit.
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by ~DJ~ »

:oops:.. or.. yeah, that would have been the easiest option..
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by bjorn98009_91 »

That sounds horrible, especially for FPS. The mesh right now is approximatly 1700 polys (yes, we have already optimized), so having two of them for each one and then say 50 in the map total wouldn't be all that good.

I've been getting some help from AlvinD, he first tried to apply two materials to the same model object, that didn't work. Then he tried making two objects, one for the base and one for the glass portion naming them Obj01 and Obj02. The 3ds2de converter skips the Obj02 object completly, for some reason. I thought it was possible to have multiple objects in a 3DS file.

So I'm at a loss. Can't open them up in UnrealFX since the formats aren't compatible. Converting from unreal to dx doesn't look all that good :/
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by bjorn98009_91 »

I just opened a TNM model in UnrealFX and saw that it had some unlit faces. Who did those models? Surely someone must know how it works.
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by bjorn98009_91 »

Ah, it appears that it's the 3ds2de program that is at fault. DJ hooked me up with the Milkshape plugin for Deus Ex and using that, instead of using the converter program to convert from 3DS, somehow fixed all my issues. :) Great!
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by DDL »

I'd say starting off with a 1.7k poly model that you're going to spam everywhere is a pretty bad idea for the poor ageing unreal engine. Does it really need to be that high-definition?

Of course, LOD scaling should help, but it's often quite...ugly.
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by bjorn98009_91 »

Problem is that that was the optimized version, and we couldn't use it cause it needs new UV-mapping (and we don't have the time for that now). So then we have to revert the the original unoptimized version, and that was 3.1K.

I'm thinking of just scrapping this for now until we can get new models, if that ever happens.
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Re: Ideas on how to make glowing textures for meshes?

Post by Jonas »

DDL wrote:I'd say starting off with a 1.7k poly model that you're going to spam everywhere is a pretty bad idea for the poor ageing unreal engine.
Are you sure that's going to be a problem? I seem to recall Phasmatis ran some polycount tests with meshes for Deus Ex that turned out a modern PC could handle millions of triangles on screen at the same time in Deus Ex because the lighting model is so primitive compared to what modern games throw at your video card.

I could be wrong though, it's been a while after all, and they were just some quick tests.
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