Holograms - Important (for me) Flipbook Question

[metal_head]

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?b4zlabtjpty <--- That video is from my game,it shows a hologram trigger. In my games I plan to make lots of holograms like this one,but there's a problem : The hologram in the video is made with a clip brush and an animated wall decal . As I said I plan to make lots of holograms in the levels as it's a Sci-Fi game.I made soeme really cool effects with Particle Illusion,but the problem is that every time I want to make a hologram I'll have to make a clip brush and a WallDecal entity,pointing at it,and that's :
first - hard to make,because in the editor I can't see how the decal will look in the game.
second - it slows down the editor,I don't know about you guys,but on my computer,when I put lot's of entities and stuff,the editor gets slow.

Now,I tried making all this with a texture,replaced by a flipbook.All the images of the flipbook have resolution 256 x 256,I copied one of the base bitmaps into the TXL file,so that I'll be able to position and scale the texture without problems.Of course I have alphamaps too,but the problem is that when I compiled the level I expected the replacd texture to be transparent because of the flipbook's alphamaps,but it wasn't,it was animated,but not transparent...
Soooo....what's the easiest way to make animated holograms out of bitmaps?

[Juutis]

when I put lot's of entities and stuff,the editor gets slow.

Yap, that's RFEdit(Pro), alright.

Some tricks I've used:
- Reduce the undo levels: File -> Preferences -> Max undo levels.
- Hide stuff: Either group parts of the level together and hide the groups or go View -> Show -> untick whatever you don't want to see.
- Restart the editor often.


And BTW, that video looks awesome! That hologram effect is really cool.

[metal_head]

Yap, that's RFEdit(Pro), alright.

Some tricks I've used:
- Reduce the undo levels: File -> Preferences -> Max undo levels.
- Hide stuff: Either group parts of the level together and hide the groups or go View -> Show -> untick whatever you don't want to see.
- Restart the editor often.


And BTW, that video looks awesome! That hologram effect is really cool.

Thanks for the comment and the hint! Soo,there's no other way,right? I'll have to stick to the wall decal and clip brush version

[Allanon]

but the problem is that when I compiled the level I expected the replacd texture to be transparent because of the flipbook's alphamaps,but it wasn't,it was animated,but not transparent...

You can use a sheet brush with a flipbook that has alpha bitmaps. Just make sure the texture that the flipbook is replacing is solid RGB color (255,0,254) and the texture bitmap is the same size as the flipbook bitmaps. Also make sure the sheet brush has transparent selected.

[metal_head]

Strange,but it's not working,I made a solid colored texture in RGB color 255,0,254,checked the transparent box,put the name of the texture in the flipbook entity,but it's not working,the flipbook isn't applied .
I've uploaded an archive with a shot of the flipbook entity,the transparent texture and a texture that the flipbook entity uses,everything is OK,right?

Oh,yeah! I unchecked the transparent box and the flipbook wasn't applied also...the transparent texture has the same size as the bitmaps from the flipbook (256 x 256) and the flipbook is still not applied.Strange...it can be applied on every other texture,but not the transparent one...

[Allanon]

Don't know why you are having problems, this is how I tested:

1. I copied the flip bitmaps that came with RF and then renamed them aflip, this will be the alpha bitmaps. You can't use the same bitmap for both base bitmap and alpha bitmap.

2. Add a solid sheet brush to the level, assign it a transparent texture call TransBmp, select Transparent setting for the brush. Test level to see if sheet brush is transparent.

3. Add a flipbook entity to the level. Set AlphaNameBase to aflip, set BmpNameBase to flip, set BitmapCount to 4, set style to 1, and set TextureName to TransBmp.

After doing that you should see transparent numbers on the sheet brush when testing the level.

[metal_head]

I found out where's the problem! It was the name,the previous texture name was "bars_transparent",I made a new texture (this time I decided to be a TGA,because that way it will be easier for me to position the texture) and I named it "bars1" and it worked,so there are two versions:
a) the texture name shouldn't be too long
b) it shouldn't contain any "_" symbols in it's name.
I'm pretty sure it's one of the reasons above .

Thanks!