By: Dr. Slue
This tutorial covers:
How to have realistic looking glass in your level!
Forward:
These can be used to make some great effects in your levels, so i
thought you guys might like to see a tutorial on it!
Content:
Ok, so you've got a real snazzy level that just needs that little something or you want to give a sense of connectivity, or you just think it'll look damn cool to have some glass in your level. Well, this should hopefully be very helpful to you.
Anyway, lets get into it. Load up your level, or make a quick couple of rooms as test subjects. I am going to be using a little 'early 1900's street scene at night' kind've thingy. Here are a few shots just for the sake of it, so that you get the idea of why I'm putting in the glass. Meaning, it helps if the glass has a purpose. Anyway, here:
Hmm. It needs a little something. Glass windows! I'm going to add in windows on both sides of this little house/room thingy. I think it'll add just a touch of glass and make it look more realistic.
Lets get down to it shall we? The first thing you need to do is to find the place that you want the window and since this is an intermediate tutorial, i'm not going to baby you around and show you every single step of the way. But what you need to do is to make a (i'm going to use a cube brush, since it is just a straight wall) brush that is the correct size for what you want. Subtract a hole in the wall that you are using (that's if you are using a wall), where you want the glass. Here is how mine looks :
Got your hole in the wall ready? Good. There's not much left to do.
Now what you have to do is make a sheet the same height and width as the hole. Position it right in the middle of it...like so:
Then choose a nice glass texture (try
Coret_FX or GenIn for a whole bunch of em), then click on the 'Add
Special Button': 
And select 'Transparent Window' in the Drop-Down Menu. And press Ok. Wow. Looks pretty doesn't it? Well...we're not finished yet. At the moment, its just a sheet that you can walk through, so we are going to change that. Sometimes you will only be making the windows really small and so, it wont really matter, but you should do this next step. Especially if you have a whole wall of glass or something. What we are going to do now is stop players from being able to walk and shoot through it, while still being able to use it for its primary function (to look through it!). Now get your (in my case) cube brush back by just clicking on the cube button, since none of the settings should have changed and it should still be in the correct position.
By this stage, it should be looking somewhat like this:
Now, all you have to do is go to: Add Special > 'Invisible Collision Hull'. Now, your hole will look like it's been filled up with the texture of the glass, but don't worry, it wont appear in the game. So just do a quick rebuild of your level and you're all set to play and check out your glass!
Since i cant be bothered, I'm not going to make an in-game picture of the glass in action, so here is the final result, just pretend the glass looks normal, like it would in the game :-)
Well, that's it till next time folks, i hope you've found this tutorial useful and feel free to check back at the site regularly. Tutorial suggestions are also welcome :-) Toodles!
About this tute: This tute was requested by a number of people, and it makes a lot of sense for me to listen to the people that use these tutorials 8-D
Feel free to e-mail me with suggestions
for tutorials , I'll be happy to make them
if I have enough
knowledge on the subject.
My E-mail: [email protected]