Fog

[AKPiggott]

How do you put fog in a level?

 

I've tried searching the forum with the resurrected seach function, but the word "fog" is too short to return any results.

[WhiteShdw]

Easy one. Just cover a brush with a fog shader. Make it a detail brush. Have a look at the bottom of the CTF_bespin example map.

It's one big cubelike brush that covers the entire bottom of the pit. And only the top portion is visible in the map the rest is basically outside of the map.

 

You might want to make a new fog shader, special for your map, so you can set your own draw/view distance.

 

example:

 

textures/texture_dir/fogname

{

qer_editorimage textures/fogs/fog.tga

qer_nocarve

surfaceparm nonsolid

surfaceparm nonopaque

surfaceparm fog

surfaceparm trans

q3map_nolightmap

fogparms ( 0 0 0 ) 850.0

cull disable

}

 

the value "850.0" is the opacity depth. This is basically the distance you can see in the fog, in gridunits. The value ( 0 0 0 ) is the color of the fog in RGB values. You might want to change that in ShaderEd. It's easier to select a color there.

[AKPiggott]

Excellent advice White, thanks once again.

[Gonkish]

yeah that's easy enough. just some things. you don't want the fog brush to touch any part of the void at all, and you always want only one surface of it viewable to the player. If you do something like I am with my level (foghull w/ q3map2), you can use the global worldspawn fog that is specific to JO and SoF2, just add the key "_fog" in the worldspawn in Radiant, and point it to your fog shader (be sure to start the directory with "/textures/". Example: "/textures/gonk/gonkfog".)

[WhiteShdw]

Originally posted by Gonkish

yeah that's easy enough. just some things. you don't want the fog brush to touch any part of the void at all,.....

 

Weird. I never had any trouble with that. As long as you don't have any leaks, it shouldn't be a problem. The Fog brush in CTF_Bespin touches the void i believe.

[AKPiggott]

I placed a load of fog brushes everywhere, but it just became needlessly complicated and it was covering most of the level anyway. So I'm gonna do a global fog instead. At first I covered the entire level in a fog brush, it works OK but Gonk's method is a better idea, so I've implemented that.

 

Now all I have to do is continuosly tweak the shader to get the effect that I want.

[WhiteShdw]

nice one.

It can improve your performance as well. I'm not sure if you need to add any tags to your compile for that though.

[AKPiggott]

Wow...

 

 

 

 

It adds a real dirty and industrial feel to my level. Just what I was looking for, I felt everything looked a bit too clean and new.

[Gonkish]

yeah if you're using a global fog you can utilize a foghull to clip the stuff that's beyond the opaque point of the fog. It's exactly the method used by a bunch of the old N64 games, especially the first Turok. It's not perfect, but it does help.

 

There's a short tutorial explaning foghulls here. You can skip the part pertaining to the massive fog brush.

 

[edit: Posted the wrong URL! Bad me! Fixed now.]

[WhiteShdw]

Looks good Akpiggot. What kind of opacity depth are you using there?

 

Hey Gonk, are you sure that link is correct? It's showing me a lot of stuff except a fog tutorial.

[AKPiggott]

The depth is 12000 which is perfect really. The fog impacts indoor areas in a cool way but in a way where it isn't strictly visible as fog.

[Gonkish]

doh I messed it up somehow.. and of course didn't check the URL.. anyways.. it's fixed now.

[WhiteShdw]

Cheers mate. That's good info.

[AKPiggott]

Out of interest. If I wanted to place fog brushes within my foggish map or within another fog brush, will it work?

[Gonkish]

That's a good question... I'll go test.

[Gonkish]

looks like it won't allow that. It looks fine from above...kinda.. you can tell that there is a fog there.. but... if the player looks UP.. it immediately kills the global fog.. it's very noticeable. Plus, Radiant apparently doesn't like what would otherwise be a perfectly placed fog brush in a global fog.. it yells a LOT about there being multiple faces viewable on the fog brush, when there clearly are not.

[Emon]

You could try replacing the global fog with a giant, level-covering fog brush. Or, if the fog is something like mist on the floor, you could use one or two transparent layers to duplicate the effect.