breakable glass and outdoor lighting

[Phragmites]

ive got a copy of the unrealed reference file that someone put together, but i cant seem to find how to make breakable glass. can anyone help?

also, how do you light outdoor areas with such a strong single light source? each light can only get so bright. i cant believe that you just stack a whole bunch o'lights on top of each other. is zonelighting related to what im after?

any help appreciated.

- P

[i-spie]

A good tute on the subject of exploding glass can be found at http://www.planetunreal.com/unrealed/tutorials/adv/exp_glass/


Cheers!

[8-4-7-2]

1) Breakable glass is just a sheet and an invisible collision hull, combined to a mover! Set movetime=O and place keyframe 1 "outside" of the world. Use a "breakable glass" actor from classes -> effects to trigger the mover!

2)To lit outdoor areas use zonlighting (Place a ZoneInfo and edit "lighting") combined with normal lights, set to cylinder, max. radius + brightness.

[Edited by 8-4-7-2 on 07-20-2000 at 09:36 AM]

[Phragmites]

thanks guys. helpful and concise as usual.

- P

[Pj]

What is that Ued reference you mention ?

Can you send me it ?

jnh@telepolis.com

thx

[Phragmites]

Pj

cant send it to you, its a 13 MB download. a guy called ekoSonic put it together. its pretty comprehensive (except for breakable glass, but i'll get the updated version and see what's new).

ekoSonic's page is at: http://planetunreal.com/osx/ and the download link is at the bottom.

- P

[Phragmites]

i-spie, i tried the tutorial you mentioned for the breakable glass (sorry 8-4-7-2, it looked more simple than a sheet/collision hull combo, and besides, how do you combine two objects to a mover?). of course, its not gone smoothly.

basically, you create a thin cube, add it as a transparent window, texture it, copy polys to brush and add it as a mover. add the breakable glass actor and bingo, breakable glass. except it isnt transparent. the original transparent window brush i added was transparent, but a mover created from it isnt. can anyone help?

also, the glass so created isnt breakable from both sides, even if i bury the breakable glass actor in the middle of the mover. how do i make it breakable from both sides, just add another actor?

thanks again.

- P

[8-4-7-2]

The first glass I ever build was created as you did, Phragmites! And it looked ugly as hell...
It's really easy for me (I'm a little more experienced ;))

Make the glass like you would normally do:
1) Add sheet
2) Add invisible collision hull, 2 units thick
Don't let it touch anything!!!

3) Now build a brush (the red one) around the 2 things and
intersect! Now you have 1 (in words: one) brush.
4)Make it a mover
5)Keyframe 0 = original position
Keyfrane 1 = somewhere off the world
movetime = 0
bOnlyOnceTriggerable = true ;very imortant!
6)You know how to use the "bareakable glass" actor. To use it from both sides, set it directly on the brush's line (that works for me!). You can also try to increase the collision radius (properties)

[Phragmites]

thats going to be the first thing i do this evening. thanks for the info. i never realized you could intersect brushes that werent touching (glass sheet and collision hull). i thought the red brush would always be a single unit and couldnt be split between separate items. learn something new every day...

- P

[i-spie]

This is how I do it.....

Lets say I have a wall between two rooms. I make a brush as big as I want my window to be height wise...then I press "intersect" so that brush is the exsact thickness of the wall.

Note: Through out this procedure, pls leave the grid on and "snap to" this will let everything line up perfectly.


Now I have and opening...big deal. Now I take the same brush that I just used to subtract the opening, and place it somewhere else inside the room and "add" it. Now all I have to do is select my glass texture (I use the one from coret.utx) and texture my block. I then select the two faces of the window and select "transparent" and "unlit" (though the unlit one is a personal pref) under surface properties.

Now I want to intersect the brush.....using the build cube icon on the right side of my screen I enter the measurements so that I create a brush that is bigger than my window brush. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT that you manually enter the figures and NOT USE THE resize icon and drag it bigger...this will cause faults in your mover such as not being able to break it from both sides.

When your new brush is completely around the window brush press "intersect". Now highlight the brush and select "copy polygons to brush". Move your new brush away from the old brush and select the "create mover" icon on the right. This will change it into a mover (as I'm sure you know) and all that is left is to place this mover into the opening you had created in the first place.

Now follow the directions in the tute I told you about and it will work....you see using the same brush that you used to make the first opening is the best way of making the window fit perfectly. Also, doing the last manual intersect is often overlooked and causes the mover to spaz...

If it still won't work for you, email me at i-spie@visto.com and I'll send you over and exsample.

Good Luck!

[G-Man]

If you make the window the size of the opening in the wall wonit it look weird? I tried to put in a window on my map and it was about made from a brush 16 units wide. The problem is, when you make the surfaces transparent, you don't see any of the brushes immediately behind the transparent surface that are in contact with the window brush (i.e. you won't see the window ledge on the other side of the glass.).

Someone suggested on another forum that I make the window one unit smaller all around (or make a groove in the wall) such that the window doesn't come into contact with the brushes around it. To me this seems like a waste of polygons.

I think the best way to do the windows is as mentioned above (although I have not tried it yet myself...) with the sheet and a collision hull. I was wondering though, can the sheet come into contact with the other surfaces around it or must it also not be in contact with anything else around it.

Another point is, if your making a multiplayer map why make it so the window can onl be broken once? Make it come back after a persiod of time for other people playing the map to break! There is a tutorial on how to do this on unrealed.com.

[i-spie]

That was aready asked about how to make the glass break and come back...hence the tute I suggested earlier. If you want to see the window frame you can do 2 things. Decrease the thickness of the window (easily done in the top down view) which would expose the window sill from both sides and you could texture them to standout. Or you can make the edges "transparent" (the glass brush) so you can see the sills through the "glass". Personally I like the first option, but to each his own.......

[Phragmites]

hey, i-spie, it worked. i must have missed out that one intersect step. problem now is it still only breaks from one side. ive doubled the collision radius with no effect. moving the breaking glass actor doesnt make a difference either, nor did adding another bg actor. any more ideas?

ps., sorry 8-4-7-2, i had already tried this method so thought i'd see what went wrong. any ideas about making it break on both sides?

oh, and i just made the brush the same height and width of the 'hole' but only 4 units thick. looks good.

i know what you mean about having it restart after a few mins, but if youre having a fast and furious match (like i prefer) i like to keep it short and reload the map.

- P

[i-spie]

Your glass sheet is a mover. After you make your glass brush, which you did :), you must first "intersect" a larger brush around it BEFORE you make it a mover. BUT, when making the larger brush you must NOT drag it bigger than the brush you have now...you MUST scale it using the cube icon and enter the numerical values to make it bigger.

An example is if your glass brush is 16x16x8 you would make your new brush 32x32x16....and place this new brush around your old one...then press "intersect". After that you would press the "moverbrush" icon.....

Try it again and follow these steps exsactly, and it will work! If after you still have problems, e-mail me the room with the glass mover and I'll see if I can find the problem.

Cheers!

[8-4-7-2]

I looked in nearly all levels in Unreal 1 and lot of user-made maps: All windows there are a sheet with an collsion hull. The sheet can of course (and it must for looking right) touch the wall, because there is no polygon in front of the walls at the sides...

But if you want to use the other method, use it!

Ok, increasing the radius didn't work(sorry), but here may be your problem: If the window brush is too thick, the "breakable glass" actor, could be inside the brush. Therefore if you shoot, you only hit the surface, but not the actor inside. But I could be mistaken!!

[Phragmites]

the window brush/mover is only 4 units thick, so the breakable glass actor, when in the middle of the window, isnt engulfed by it at all. but still it wont break from one side.

its getting a little frustrating now, 'cause i want to get on and do other things to finish the map. maybe i could email the map to you i-spie (and 8-4-7-2 if you'd like it) and get you to look at what ive done. ive got a feeling that the map itself is a bit scruffy - it is my first attempt - and that i may have designed it on paper with no regard to how difficult it would be once translated to the editor. lots of work yet to do before i feel comfortable releasing it to the world, but the bots play pretty well, so that keeps me entertained.

- P

[i-spie]

The glass brush mover and the exploding glass actor are not related at all except that you link them in the "events" menu. You can have one with out the other. All the exploding actor does is make glass particles when the glass mover disappears...because it would look odd if the glass mover just simply vanished.

Also, I too have seen the other method used for making glass, but I find the other method less likely to cause BSP errors.

I have made a demo available at my sitebox:

http://www.visto.com
login: i-spie

Maybe seeing it will be better than me explaining it.

[Phragmites]

'fraid i cant load that page from home on my pc or at work on a mac. dont know whats going on there.

- P

[i-spie]

I mailed it to you as an "attachment"....visto was down yesterday or so I was told.......