Planet holograms

[Jedi Orian]

hey ppl

how'd ya make a planet hologram, like in jedi pyrimid (the room in the archives)

cant think other any other examples, sry


thanks

[Pb2Au]

You would need to make your own texture, probably semi-transparent in a blueish hue (you can do that easily using Photoshop). The hard thing would be getting it to be walk-through. A perfect sphere wouldn't work, because they are solid. You would either have to resort to making a model (in which case it wouldn't turn on/off) or use a polygon with a ton of sides, the bottom and the top textured system>nodraw (making one of these would be a texturing nightmare.
OR resort to scripting, but that should be avoided at most costs.
I can't think of any workaround besides those.

[lassev]

For a planet hologram a sphere model would be the best bet, since it's hard to make a good sphere in Radiant and have intelligent texturing on it. So, in that sense you could either make the model in a modelling program (like Max) or acquire a ready made some other way. Then apply your needed planetary texture (shader). Models are by nature not solid in game, so that's not a problem, and it surely turns on and off, if you make it an entity.

PB2AU, I don't know what scripting has to do with planet holograms, but I find it offending you treat scripting as something "that should be avoided at most costs"... Geez...

This is a sphere model based semitransparent Yavin4 planetary hologram from my map:

(Sphere model courtesy of Mercenary)

[Jedi Orian]

cool thanks for the help, i thought of the model shere idea too, i dont know alot about making textures shaders tho, ill give it a go with a few tuts

thanks again

[lassev]

For the texture, you should use a 32 bit png or tga image. The byte on the alpha channel then defines the level of transparency. It doesn't matter where you get the actual planet surface texture. If you get it from somewhere over the net, it's most likely a jpg, so just add an alpha channel in Photoshop, and fill the alpha channel with a gray colour somewhere near the middle. You can then adjust it later as needed.

My shader code for the holoplanet in the picture was following:

 models/map_objects/yavin_IV/Yavin_IV
 {
 	surfaceparm	nonsolid
 	surfaceparm	trans
 	q3map_nolightmap
 	cull	twosided
 	{
 		map models/map_objects/yavin_IV/Yavin_IV
 		blendFunc GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE
 	}
 }

So, it was really simple and basic one for my uses as you can see. But that's a start.

Well, md3 models contain the texture information inside the main file, so you have to obey that naming also in the shader (or change it in the md3 file itself...).

[Pb2Au]

I don't know what scripting has to do with planet holograms

Neither do I, but I had recently woken up and was inclined to say stupid things.
Both shaders and scripting have intimidated me for the longest time, ever since I tried to make a basic script in behavED and wound up jumping up and down on the floor like a frustrated chimpanzee. Shaders seem simpler to me now, mainly because stuff gets more clear as you get older and do more programming-esque stuff (HTML or using Command Prompt, for instance)

[oxyonagon]

Scripting is used for making an event happen during gameplay, such as a simple action like a door being locked, or a train moving to a different position.

Shaders are small blips of code that make a "texture" act dynamically. Such as glow, or move, or give off light.