Help With Effect Shaders

Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 7:55 pm

This is more of an artistic challenge than a Geck question.

I have an effect shader that makes enemies red.

http://s779.photobucket.com/albums/yy80/HupOranje/IR3.jpg

Then I add an image space modifier that makes the the world green. But it also makes my red Effect Shader pinkish orange.

http://s779.photobucket.com/albums/yy80/HupOranje/IR5.jpg

It seems to me that I need to guess a color for the effect shader such that when the image space modifier is applied, the enemies will appear more red than orange.

There is so little help on the matter on the effects shader wiki page. It only describes what the functions are, not what they do or how to apply them except for some very basic steps.

My effect shader doesn't have enough green tint to be able to subtract enough to allow for the addition of green color from the image space modifier. Is there a way to add negative color to the effect shader somehow?
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Jynx Anthropic
 
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Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 5:10 pm

I've played with a similar thing, through blending vertex colors, colored emissive, colored glow maps. on a white diffuse map.
Then when you are under colored lights.... ooooo weee. things get fonkey.
I can predict the colors I'll get using different vertex colors in conjunction with different emissive colors by referring to additive color mixing table. but predicting how that actually renders under colored lights/and/or with colored glow maps messes with my head, I should really work it all out at some point...

It seems to me that I need to guess a color for the effect shader such that when the image space modifier is applied, the enemies will appear more red than orange.

basically yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_theory might help- look at the diagram of subtractive and additive color mixing.

however, the image space modifier looks like it just overlays color, you may not be getting any color blending effect. try a blue/purple effect shader and see what happens.
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Ian White
 
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Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 6:10 pm

I've been playing with this all day and I've found that the things that make the most difference are:

From the Effect Shader-
* Increasing the Alpha properties
* Checking 'Inverse' for the edge effect - this really helped to make the effect stay red

From the Image Space Modifier-
*Increasing the the Saturation

Using a blue-purple effect shader only resulted in a softer purple effect.

I'm still working on it though. At least the enemies are red now.
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Nicole Kraus
 
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Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 7:48 am

cool. I'll file that under.... hmm... ahh I'll just toss it over there in the corner. I'll organize it all later. :bonk:
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Gracie Dugdale
 
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Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 12:39 pm

Not that this helps much or anything, but based on your pics it actually still looks cool. Everything is all green, then the body is highlighted with orange.
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matt oneil
 
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Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 5:36 pm

Well, thanks for the vote of confidence. Here is what it looks like now:

http://s779.photobucket.com/albums/yy80/HupOranje/IRDay.jpg
http://s779.photobucket.com/albums/yy80/HupOranje/IRNight.jpg
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Angela Woods
 
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Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 3:54 pm

That looks great. What exactly is it for?
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Strawberry
 
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Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 9:04 am

That looks great. What exactly is it for?

:rofl:

How can it look great when you don't know what its for. Lets say I wanted a kids birthday party. Would it still look great?

Okay, alright, enough with the snide remarks. It supposed to be the visual effect of wearing some Infra-red or night vision head gear. It lets you see those pesky enemies when the are way off in the distance.
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Joe Alvarado
 
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Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 7:06 am

:rofl:

How can it look great when you don't know what its for. Lets say I wanted a kids birthday party. Would it still look great?

Okay, alright, enough with the snide remarks. It supposed to be the visual effect of wearing some Infra-red or night vision head gear. It lets you see those pesky enemies when the are way off in the distance.

Haha by great I meant cool, and it looks well done and nice. Visually. I think NV (night vision not new vegas :P) goggles that show you enemies is a fantastic idea. For when they are out of compass/perceptive range.
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Robert Jr
 
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Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 11:31 am

I have been asked to darken the surroundings (using an IMOD) which I can do. The problem is when darkening the surroundings, the actors with the Effect Shaders also darken and become hard to see - which defeats the purpose of the Infra-red effect. Can some one (Ghogiel) tell me if adding an emmisve/glow texture to the effect shader will help brighten the effect shader while the surroundings are dark? I suspect this would work, but I have very little idea on how to create an emmisive/glow texture for the effect shader that would not ruin the underlying textures for the actors. Actually I have no idea how to make the texrture period.

http://s779.photobucket.com/albums/yy80/HupOranje/IRSample1.jpg
http://s779.photobucket.com/albums/yy80/HupOranje/IRSample3.jpg
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Latisha Fry
 
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Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 3:26 pm

Don't make it that much darker. If your going to make it darker, make it only a little bit darker because thats way too dark and looks kinda funky.
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Danii Brown
 
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Post » Tue Sep 21, 2010 8:28 pm

Can some one (Ghogiel) tell me if adding an emmisve/glow texture to the effect shader will help brighten the effect shader while the surroundings are dark? I suspect this would work,

yup. that's exactly what you want to do. Well assuming emissive has any effect- it'll be the desired one.

there are some options here. I recently looked into the effect for the glowing one. and reversed engineered it just to get a very basic understanding of this area of this. By now you probably know more about this area than I.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1079888-changing-a-glowing-ones-glow/page__p__15725772__fromsearch__1&#entry15725772

So I would try to glean as much of that set up as possible. and go nuts.

I'm pretty sure with some experience/experimenting you can get a lot better looking ir effect.
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Richard Dixon
 
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