RTCW Based
on tutorial by Fiesling in German language |
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When I decided to make nice looking rain in my RTCW level I started to surf the web for good help. Too my disappointment I found very little about it. Main reason is probably because rain is not used in official RTCW maps of first release. I come across on bunch of info but they where eider MOHAA related or discussed use of rain texture under Quake III Arena sfx_textures (I don't have Quake III Arena). Then I stepped on Fiesling Place a German site where I found under RTCW tutorial section rain tut. Brief look on this tut and the shader structure has made me very interested. Here is my best translation and comments of this tutorial based on my own experimentation with this interesting shader approach. |
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Translation
from German One of the problems we have with Q3-Engine is those we always face in real world - in this case the rain! It seams we tent to not like it... except for our farmers! But now with Q3-Engine we can build it right into our maps. So far in Q3-Engine rain was implemented always with simple shader with the cost of large quantity of Fps (engine Frames Per Second). This is why there where hardly build maps with rain. However MODs like Urban Terror include the rain without compromising Fps. In the following I will explain, how one makes the rain in the way to not effect Fps engine power. |
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The concept of rain shader consists of 5 parts (or 5 individual shaders). Each Shader has its own falling speed and angle. When you build the map make set of brushes for each raindrop (raindrop brush will release drops according to applied particular shader). Make them Nodraw texture and apply lower brush face with the rain texture of your choice - you have 5 to chose from! Wow? The lower? Exactly! The shader arranges to downward fall of the texture (rain drops) also still beyond the Brush face! And therefore the only restriction of using this method is situated exactly here. Example:
If you will have underground bunker in your map, then it will rain there
also. You must consider that before building your map. Here is the screenshot from the Radiant. The picture shows the upper/top Radiant view.
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Here is the side view. You can see clearly that numerous rain brushes are "inside" of the top portion/ceiling of sky brush. |
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If you are not satisfy with degree rain is falling down you can readjust this in the rain shader. The comments
on the below screenshot explain the mode of shader operation. The shader
can make also snowflakes. The rain is finished. On below
screenshot rain doesn't appear very well, because the rain moves as the
play goes. End
of German translation |
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Conclusion I have made simple map using shader and brush method described above. I was very impressed by rain effect but I found that when rain brushes where placed to high the rain will not fall on the soil but will rain above my head. Without modifying shader script itself I have duplicated rain brushes. I have added sound and fog effect and rain was very good looking and feeling. Here is pk3 file with complete rain map that I have made at the first time. Just place rain.pk3 file in your \main directory and from console write \spdevmap rain KoS |
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