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ALPHA CHANNEL TUTORIAL FOR UT2004
Making an alpha channel mask with Paint Shop Pro 9.0.
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Alpha Channels and their masks offer some interesting possibilities in UT2004. For instance the above shot was taken inside the UEditor and you will notice the floor has no light actors. That is because an Alpha Channel Mask was made as a Self Illumination Mask of the floor texture (as a new shader inside UT2004). Here's how it was done.
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PHASE 1 - Making the Gradient
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Here's the floor texture I used by one of my favorite texture artists, Yves "EvilLair" Allaire. We're going to make a gradient from light to dark for this texture. The gradient will be used to imply a lit side of this texture and diminish accordingly. We'll come back to this texture later.
At this time, go ahead and make a new 256 x 256 texture (background black is fine).
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If your Materials Palette is not up on your screen, hit "F6". Once it is up, select your "Flood Fill" tool and then come over to the Materials Palette and select a pre-made gradient material (any one will do).
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The one I selected was "Metal Steel". Click the side bar that the Green Arrow is pointing at and you should now see an assortment of pre-made gradients below. Scroll through and select "Black-White".
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Make sure that your Angle is set to 0 and hit "OK".
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With the Flood Fill tool, select/tag the new 256 x 256 texture you made. Now the Black-White Gradient has been applied.
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Now we want to shape the gradient to mimic a more realistic falloff. To do that, let's use the Raster Deform Tool.
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Left Click Hold the bottom center node and drag it up roughly where shown.
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Now Left Click Hold the top center node and drag down roughly where shown.
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Now grab the "Fill Tool" and make your fill a solid black. Go to the bottom of the texture and fill it black.
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Time for a new Raster Layer to finish the upper section. Go up to Layers and Left Click "New Raster Layer".
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Select the Fill Tool again and change from a solid back to a gradient material as we did earlier and rotate the angle to 180.
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Left click the texture to apply the gradient.
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Select the Raster Deform tool once again and left click hold the bottom center node and drag it up to meet the edge of the first gradient that was made.
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You should have something similar to this now. The reason we made the second gradient part was to set the brightest part of the light a short distance from the light source which helps makes the light gradient appear more natural.
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Last step before masking: Merge the 2 Raster Layers into a single Layer. Right Click either of the 2 Raster Layers in the Layer Menu , scroll down to Merge, and Left Click "Merge All (Flatten)". Now the Gradient texture is ready for the next phase.
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dregsld.com
©Spittin' Image Productions 2006
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