Freelancer Modding Tutorials

[Dusty Lens]

How to get textures glowing

By Angel of Mercy

To give the models a bit more realistic view it will be nice especially for windows, nozzles and other parts of the skin to have glowing characteristics.
Therefore i made this small tutorial. The Base was the tutorial made by Argh on lancersreactor.com.
So try and enjoy the results or flame me, if this tutorial isn't to understand.

1. You will need the UTF editor available on lancersreactor.
2. In the UTF editor load the Mat file. You will see two nodes : "material library" and "texture library". You will need the "material library" only.
3. Open the "material library" and you will see all textures as subnodes.
4. Open the texture you want to glow. For example: "CorsairWindow01", which is one of my window textures. You will see another three subnodes: "Dt_flags", "Dt_name" and "type".
5. Add three more nodes to the existing three and name them "Et_flags", "Et_name" and "Ec". Therefore in UTF editor you have the button "Add nodes".

It should look like:

material library
|------------CorsairWindow01
.................|----------Dt_flags
.................|----------Dt_name
.................|----------type
.................|----------Et_flags
.................|----------Et_name
.................|----------Ec

6. Click "Dt_flags" and hit the edit button. Copy all values into "Et_flags" and hit the "Update" button. Do the same with the values of Dt_name. Copy them into Et_name.
7. For Ec (emissive channels) you will need to edit three values manually for the RGB channels.

1.000000 (red)
1.000000 (green)
1.000000 (blue)

This setting means the brightest white, but please avoid values of 1.00000, because it may produce game crashes.
Better is:

0.800000
0.800000
0.800000

Thats it. Everything else is up to you and the emitted colors you want. I show you one more example.
For Zoner Destroyer windows i used Rheinland capship windows and these are my settings for the RGB values:

0.700000
0.800000
0.600000

This is a light yellow with a small green touch.
To get the best color value it is helpful to open Photoshop, GIMP or whatever you have to edit images. Go in the color settings. The bright white will be shown there as:

255 (1.000000 in UTF editor)
255 (1.000000 in UTF editor)
255 (1.000000 in UTF editor)

Now set the color in your image editing program as you want, then use a bit of mathematics to enter the value in UTF editor.
For example my Zoner Destroyer windows again:

0.700000 in UTF editor = 179 in Photoshop, GIMP and so on for red channel value.
0.800000 in UTF editor = 204 in Photoshop, GIMP and so on for green channel value.
0.600000 in UTF editor = 153 in Photoshop, GIMP and so on for blue channel value.

Just one word of advise: Textures you want emissive characteristics for, avoid dark colors. They cannot emit light.
Finally save the overworked mat file and test it in HardCMP or in-game.
Hope this tutorial is easy to understand and helpful.

AoM