Note: This tutorial is for intermediate to advanced users of RF and assumes you have at least a basic understanding of it and its associated tools. It also assumes you know how to setup and run a level.

Tutorial 1: Glow Effects
Possibly one of the best things I discovered while working on Fatal Exception, glow effects can add a distinctive sci-fi look to a scene, or even be used for a simple glowing lightbulb.

Step 1:
Delete the corona and a_corona bitmaps in the media\bitmaps directory, and replace them with two bitmaps using a resolution of 256x256 (128x128 will work as well) and remember to give them the exact same names as the .bmp's you just deleted. For the new corona.bmp use just a solid white image, for a_corona, make a black background and use the spraycan (or the brighten/darken tool in photoshop or equivelent) and make a white area in the center of the image (try to covor most of the image, but make sure it fades out to the background without touching the edges). Try to make it as smooth as you can, and be sure it is a near perfect sphere-shape. For your convenience I have included these bitmaps with this tutorial.


Step 2:
For this tutorial, we're going to make a simple glowing tube. Make a long cylinder in MS3D along the y axis (1 stack, and between 4-12 slices, uncheck close cylinder. The flat edges should be on the top and bottom). Now create a solid white texture with a resolution of 64x64 and assign it to the cylinder in milkshape (this is very important, as using an untextured actor causes the SEM's to flash back and forth between solid white and their actual color) and make it into an actor. Now make another exactly the same. Using the scale tool (F4) lock the y-axis and select Uniform scaling (7) and scale it about 1/8-1/4 larger than it's current size. Now make it into a seperate actor. (For convenience, rename the first actor glowtube1a.act and rename the second glowtube1b.act)

Step 3 (Level setup):
Now, fire up RFEditPro, and make a simple hollow cube room and add the trinity of required entitys, then assign a different texture for the ceiling, floor, and walls. Now, add two static meshes to the scene. For the first, use these settings:



For the second, use these:



Position the first in the middle of the room, stretching from the ceiling to the floor, and position the second in the exact same spot (copy the origin values if necesary). (Note: you will have to adjust the scale of both of these, but it should remain the same amount on both SEM's)

Now, add a corona entity to the scene, with these settings:



Adjust the corona's MinRadius and MaxRadious to be about twice the width of your static mesh tubes, and position it in the dead middle of the tubes (again, the origin function is handy). Copy it a few times and move the copies to equal distances from each other along the y-axis (remain in the middle of the tubes). Now compile the level and see what it looks like. You will probably have to tweak a few values on the corona to get it to the right size.

You should get something similar to this:



Notes:
-In theory, a similar effect could be achieved with fullbright level gemoetry in place of the static meshes.
-Coronas can be attached to moving level geometry and pawns.
-Pawns and Static Entity Proxy's, as well as the FlipTree, may be able to produce similar results, but do not render as fast as this method.
-Experiment around, find what works for you. There are many applications for this, and experimenting is the only way to discover all of them.

I hope this helps you in your quest to make a game!

Copyright © David McLaughlin, 2005
You may reproduce and distribute this work free of charge. Should you post it anywhere on the internet, please contact me at the Reality Factory forums first (dhost.info/realityfactory) (Send a PM to user GD1)