Pickle's tree shadow from Forged in Fire

hike1 · Post by **hike1** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 5:38 pm

http://terrymorgan.net/treeshadows.zip (309k)

This is part of the Forged in Fire demo Dan Valeo made. Don't quite know how he made the alpha map,
something about rendering the tree from the top view, anybody
know?

p.s The bmps go in /media/bitmaps, the .act file goes in actors,
the .3dt goes in levels, uses default.txl from RF072a official
download

hike1 · Post by **hike1** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 5:39 pm

http://www.mapvault.com/uploads/rf/fif_setup.rar (19MB)

Location of entire game

ZenBudha · Post by **ZenBudha** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 5:38 pm

To my knowledge he simply rendered the tree from the top as you said.
Probably with a white background would work best.

Then save the image and open in your paint program. Dessaturate the image so it's all greyscale. Save that as treeshadow.bmp or whatever. Then invert the image and save that as a_treeshadow.bmp or whatever.

If it's too transparent in game simply open up the alpha map and adjust the contrast more to whiten up the tree part (which will as you probably know reduce the transparency of the decal).

I hope that helps. So long as your lighting is planned out well you should be able to fake sunlight shadows so long as you can match the sunlight angle in game to the render angle in whatever rendering program you use.

Such as rendering the tree at a 45 degree angle, or a 15 degree angle to simulate sunset shadows.

hike1 · Post by **hike1** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 3:42 am

I'll put that in the faq.

If you have texturemaker from http://www.texturemaker.com,
demo version does 320x320, you can grab a
screenshot in actor viewer of the top view, go /color/color delta click 3 times,
/color/color contrast 3 times, color/invert poof, you're done.

I keep trying to post small 80k shots,
Sorry, you have reached your maximum Upload Quota Limit of 512 KB

for my entire life?

hike1 · Post by **hike1** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 3:56 am

http://terrymorgan.net/treeshadow.jpg

They don't display properly on static mesh terrain, only on
flat brushes.

Post by **QuestOfDreams** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 9:38 pm

Sorry, you have reached your maximum Upload Quota Limit of 512 KB

for my entire life?

increased your upload limit...
you may also delete older attachments if they are not needed any longer

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 12:58 am

Simply add a black background to the models viewport and then remove all the texture info from the model. (ie render it flat shaded with a A D E that are all 'white') Take a screenshot of the viewport. You're done. Instant alpha image to be used against a plain black image to make the shadow.

hike1 · Post by **hike1** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 1:48 am

Simply add a black background to the models viewport and then remove all the texture info from the model.

What program are we doing this in?

(ie render it flat shaded with a A D E that are all 'white')

A D E?

Take a screenshot of the viewport. You're done. Instant alpha image to be used against a plain black image to make the shadow.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 2:00 am

>>What program are we doing this in? <<

I've always used milkshape.

>> A D E<<

Ambient, Diffuse, Emissive. Set them all to 255 255 255 and the model will be rendered all white. With the black background, it forms the alpha.

The same method can be used to render a shadow for each keyframe of animation and be used witht the DrawFlipShadow() command. See Cell Division and Forged in Fire for an example. Both use bitmap flip shadows for the enemies.

Anywyas, guess who, just stoppping by, I'll probably sneek a screenshot of something being worked on the next time I come around.

Have fun.