Light planes for indoor map?

[Longshot]

So I created this map which is totally indoors, but I’m having trouble lighting it up. I’ve read a little bit about light planes and they sound like the best method of lighting my map up but I don’t know how to do it.

I’ve tried creating a plane, giving it a texture, making it render only (!) but I don’t know how to make it invisible or however it’s done.

If anyone could clear this up for me it’d help me out a lot, thanks.

[EDIT: Also, this link (http://halo.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9198&highlight=light+planes) seems to refer to what I'm talking about, too.]

[Kalub]

Make a texture that alpha blends itself out, and then make it non renderable. Give it self Illumination, and report back.

[Longshot]

I'm afraid I don't know how to do that, I mean I understand that alpha channels come out as invisible in Halo (or whatever), but I'm very inexperienced when it comes to textures. :(

[Kalub]

I think you make an all white texture with an all white alpha.



Its been a long time since I floundered with HEK

[MMFSdjw]

Use the bitmap "tags\levels\c10\bitmaps\c10_inv.bitmap"

Make your shader a "shader_transparent_chicago" and set the power and color of emitted light in the radiosity properties at the top of the shader.

[p0lar_bear]

If you don't have c10_inv for some reason, just make a 2x2 black bitmap with a black alpha channel. (White=visible, black=invisible, l2alpha kalub)

[Inferno]

Extract damnation with HEK+ there is a shader in tags/levels/test/damnation/shaders that says dam_inv_light_white_50% or something like that. Use it, it works perferctly and you can copy it and change the color of the light really easily.

[Kalub]

If you don't have c10_inv for some reason, just make a 2x2 black bitmap with a black alpha channel. (White=visible, black=invisible, l2alpha kalub)


Dude.... I used to know how :(



Its been over two years since I touched anything with HEK. I'm surprised I still remember so much that I do.

[Longshot]

Okay, I hate bumping topics and all but it's much more appropriate imo to just use this topic, but it seems I've ran into a bit of a road block here, and I got a nasty virus a few days ago - could not open explorer, so I formatted my hard drive and just restored everything.

Anyway, when I compile the bitmaps tags, it doesn't seem to work, so I'm obviously doing something wrong here, so I've taken a few shots of my .psd file to see if you blokes can give me a hand based on them.

http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/2940/screen1qo3.png

http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/8963/screen2lm0.png

Screen 1 shows the Layers palette whereas Screen 2 shows the Channels palette, and as you can see I've made an all black bitmap with an all black alpha (that's how I interpreted p0lar_bear's post, anyway), but it's still not quite right.

Also, I searched the GearBox forums and found this thread (http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=64844&highlight=light+planes) which seems to explain what I want, but I had trouble with that too.

I suck. :(

[Sel]

Not really a bump if its only a few days.

[CtrlAltDestroy]

Just make the RGB all black, don't worry about the alpha. In your shader transparent chicago tag, set the framebuffer blend mode to "add".

[MMFSdjw]

don't forget to set the bitmap tag correctly, it must have "explicit alpha"

[Longshot]

Just make the RGB all black, don't worry about the alpha. In your shader transparent chicago tag, set the framebuffer blend mode to "add".
I did that, still not quite working, it recognizes the bitmap in Tool, but won't export.

Gives me the following error:

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/7518/screen3hp7.png

Hmm, would it have anything to do with the way I export the .tiff image?

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/5773/screen4uy3.png