a few questions about what's possible in quake 3. vanilla.

[bizarre]

would it be possible to create the illusion of eye-tracking with a simple texture of an eyeball and an environment map shader over the eye polygons?
example-


and is it possible to fake 'area fog' with a bunch of sprite planes, with low opacity textures on them?
sorta like here:


and if possible, i'd like to ask for some links to active quake 3 modding information/tutorials, notably gtkradiant and quake 3 shader coding. i've searched, and a lot of the links are dead.

[Survivor]

For the shaders in gtkradiant i advise just opening up radiant then help>general>shader manual in combination with just opening up some shaders and looking at them. I'm doing the same just now and bit by bit you'll learn.

[Kat]

That's sort of like how fog already works isn't it..? if you look at a wall or ground surface you can see 'lines' which move relative to your position, these are the 'fog' planes moving in the way you've described above.. I think....

[o'dium]

That's sort of like how fog already works isn't it..? if you look at a wall or ground surface you can see 'lines' which move relative to your position, these are the 'fog' planes moving in the way you've described above.. I think....

I dont think so... Fog uses 2 differetn textures for the volume and the enter. It has a gradiant to the texture which is why it seems to fade.

[o'dium]

Fogging the way the original poster suggested will work, but it will be very ugly unless you use a lot of brushes. This will add up to a silly waste however. Just use the fog that comes with Quake 3, or, work around it. I'm not sure if fog in Quake 3 can be viewed from the side or not, i thought it could? Then again, I have been working with Q2E, and we can do a lot more stuff with fog in that. I thought in Quake 3 it was fine on any angle as long as only one side is visible?

As for his first part, with the eye, yes the only way to do this is with autosprite. However that wouldn't look nice at all, and would clip wuite badly. What he wants isn't possible without a shader change, but you could try mapping the texture to the coords in such a way that when using Enviroment mapping, it will follow the player...?

[redfella]

Just use an autosprite for the eyeball like Kaz said.

As for the fog, why not use regular fog?

[pjw]

I'm not sure if fog in Quake 3 can be viewed from the side or not, i thought it could?

Yep, it can. The basic limitation to Q3 fog is that only one face (any face) of a fog volume can be visible (although I've seen various, usually not-so-successful bits of hackery that people have used to try to bypass that limitation).

The multiple-sheets-of texture idea has been used most successfully for things such as snow and rain where you don't have a continuous surface, and I suspect it would look a bit ass for fog--you also have to *really* watch the triscount and overdraw when doing this.

bizarre, if you want to see an example of rain, feel free to check out pjw3tourney1...

[seremtan]

i don't think i'd want everyone staring at me the whole time

[obsidian]

With the fog, there will be an insane amount of rendering passes if you do something like that... with Nx the amount of rendering passes for each layer. Performance wise, not a good idea... just use normal fog. Even for rain/snow, I would recommend using small strips or even better, particles. The overdraw would be a far greater performance hit than the extra polygons drawn.

That's sort of like how fog already works isn't it..? if you look at a wall or ground surface you can see 'lines' which move relative to your position, these are the 'fog' planes moving in the way you've described above.. I think....

No, fog in Q3 is rendered by your videocard... Q3 does not generate a bunch of planes for fog. Those "lines" you see are just not-very-even gradations between different opacities of the fog. There is no texture for volume, only one optional one that may be used on the surface.

BTW, link to Q3Map2 Shader Manual in my signature. Updated quite a lot from the original manual.

And try playing around with q3map_fogDir, I don't think I've documented this yet in the manual, but you basically set an angle so you can change the direction at which the fog starts to fade from transparent to opaque. Good for forcing an angle for the player to enter into.

[bizarre]

thanks for that, guys!

the only reason i wanted to use polygonal fog was for a func_door trigger, to fill a room with fog once a button is hit. just for fun.

that, and by using a series of func_doors with a damage value that can only be triggered by like, a bfg with quad damage+doubler or something i plan on making little 'machinegun nests/ pillboxes' where ammo for the chaingun spawns pretty rapidly. basically the idea is that you can take that whole structure out with a good shot with a powerful weapon.

after the triggers are hit, it'd be cool to fil the area with a bit of fake smoke/fog and also some flames. but that would mean that the surrounding brushes would ahve to look like they're lit by the flames... hmm...

anyhoo, thanks, i'll be experimenting like a mad scientist for a while.


+question: would i be able to use detail textures on models?

[seremtan]

i don't think i'd want everyone staring at me the whole time

suck it up, winston

oh noes teh clock struck thirteen!!1111one

[obsidian]

the only reason i wanted to use polygonal fog was for a func_door trigger, to fill a room with fog once a button is hit. just for fun.

that, and by using a series of func_doors with a damage value that can only be triggered by like, a bfg with quad damage+doubler or something i plan on making little 'machinegun nests/ pillboxes' where ammo for the chaingun spawns pretty rapidly. basically the idea is that you can take that whole structure out with a good shot with a powerful weapon.

after the triggers are hit, it'd be cool to fil the area with a bit of fake smoke/fog and also some flames. but that would mean that the surrounding brushes would ahve to look like they're lit by the flames... hmm...

anyhoo, thanks, i'll be experimenting like a mad scientist for a while.


+question: would i be able to use detail textures on models?

Gimmicky maps like that don't seem to work or become very popular for Q3 type maps... mainly as a gameplay issue where people like fast action and less "special" stuff that complicates things.

Do a bit of searching on lightstyles... you can fake lighting changes by swapping out the lightmap with lightstyle effects.

Experimentation is always fun... try to make small test maps first rather than a huge project that falls flat when you find out something doesn't work - saves a huge amount of valuable time.

Detail textures will work on models.