Difference between revisions of "Legacy:UnrealFX"

Revision as of 16:27, 7 August 2010

[ FIXME: should some of this content be on some centralized page and just linked from here, since it's duplicated by Texture Effects and Surface Flags (UT), and this functionality is also available from the 3ds2unr and ActorX? –Psychic_313 ]

UnrealFX is a freeware application created by jmuh.

It's a program that allows you to change certain settings in the *_d.3d file after you have generated it with 3ds2unr, or MilkShape (or a similar program).

It was designed for making certain poly's of models unlit or modulated, on a per-face-basis (yes, you can do that!).

The author has given warning to read the ReadMe file as it is still a beta version.

UnrealFX can be downloaded here:

• http://download.dxalpha.co.uk/DX1/editing/tools/UnrealFX.zip
• http://www.unrealized.com/main/tools.html?display_section=Modeling#935951610 - Broken
• http://www.planetunreal.com/prefablab/miscfiles.asp - Broken
• http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/resources/unreal/tools.shtml - Broken

Use

UnrealFX allows you to edit the properties of your soon-to-be-imported model in _d.3d format (you don't need to alter the _a.3d file, as it only contains the animation info), allowing you to select one face (or poly), one material (or group of polies), all polies (or whole model), and/or any amount in between.

There are 2 ways to "flag" a poly:

1. a style flag
2. an fx flag

A single poly can have a style, or an fx, or both.

These are the different flags that can be set, and what they do:

Styles

See alo Color Blending for these effects

2-sided 

this applies the textue to both sides of the face(s). Good for flags, draped cloth, cloaks on player models, etc.

Translucent and 2-sided

see thru, must be 2-sided to avoid the HOM (hall of mirrors) effect. Good for glass.

Masked and 2-sided

to allow a masked texture to be invisible where masking color is placed. See Surface Flags (UT) for more info.

Modulated and 2-sided

same as masked only different way of texturing invisible areas, allows for fades. See Surface Flags (UT) for more info.

Weapon triangle

to assign the single poly used as a placeholder for position and direction of weapon by playermodel, rarely used.

Note that at least the Masked and 2-Sided flag (possibly more?) must be applied to a whole material at once if you want it to work properly. Some renderers (Glide, if I remember correctly) will do masking "correctly", but the D3D and GL renderers have been known to get it wrong if a material has masking on some polygons but not others. The workaround is as follows: if you want any of (say) Material 2's polygons to be masked, all of Material 2's polygons must be masked.

FX

Unlit

not reactive to lighting, i.e. no shading, constantly full brightness. If the texture is bright, this will appear to be self-lit - good for light sources and things that glow. If the texture is dark, no light will be cast on it, which could be good for an "evil" effect.

Flat

UT automatically gives normal surfaces a slight amount of "shinyness"; this turns that off and looks plain. Good for cloth and other textiles, as well as rocks.

Environment mapped

allows you to set the poly to act as a shiny surface, appearing to reflect what the assigned texture would look like if warped around the surface of the polygons. The image changes as your view changes, you've got to see it to understand. Not like a mirror. Good for anything shiny, combine with Translucent and 2-sided for a shiny glass surface.

No smoothing

alters the "smoothness" of the poly, keeps the light from creating shadows across each individual poly (lighting on meshes is calculated on each poly, starting at the vertex and moving toward center) in a group and makes them look like they are all one piece. Good for flat sheets, or screens, or glass.

UnrealFX does not support the UT Skeletal (.psk) format, although the same flags exist in this format. Unknown if this is a feature to be added.

Related topics

• Surface Flags (UT) implement the same feature for map geometry rather than _d.3d files.
• Texture Effects describes the same effects.