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As the title indicates, I'm not quite sure how to change the glow strength. I added glow via Rep's tool, and the texture glows brilliantly, but I don't know how to reduce it. I've tried creating a light_glow.tga, but I'm not sure what else to add....

http://www.gametoast.com/forums/viewtop ... 07#p409507
http://www.gametoast.com/forums/viewtop ... 25#p440525
http://www.gametoast.com/forums/viewtop ... 63#p463163

Hope those help.

Thanks for those AQT!

Some questions - do i change the transparency through the light_glow.tga file, or through hex-editing, and do i need a .option file for it?

You apply the "transparency"/alpha layer to the main texture via GIMP or some other image editing program. And that's it. Light_glow.tga is the secondary texture that the Meshtool's material flag for glow uses, correct? If so, then leave this texture alone.

I get a feeling your model only uses a single material, and you applied the glow flag to this only material via the Meshtool, and now the whole model is glowing, and you want to remove the glow from the parts of the models that you don't want to glow? If so, then I'm afraid you can't reduce the glow intensity using the alpha layer alone, as at the lowest intensity possible (before things start to appear pitch black) the model will appear to have the emissive colors flag applied. This means that your ambient lighting will have no effect on the model, but it will appear as if all of the lighting colors are plain white.

So, if this is the case, I suggest you have two seperate materials, one for the glowing parts and one for the non-glowing parts, and they can both use the same .tga if you want. You'll have to do this through your modeling program. How this is done I have no experience with it.

Ahh ok. I get you now. I was trying to add a seperate texture named light_glow.tga - i'm not editing a stock asset but making my own. I was trying to make it so that just the lights on this texture glowed - but that's not possible is it... I thought it would work something like bump, normal and all the other texture additions, so i made a second texture with "_glow" on the end of my texture and made it have an alpha, as so(the .tga has an alpha where the white is - jpeg can't handle transparency): .

So you're saying I can't do this?

How would I make it so that the light part glows, but so that the rest remains normal? Is that even possible?

It is possible. Take a look at how the stock Magnaguard model is set up, for example. Like I mentioned in my other reply, you need two materials, or MATDs, for this. You select the polygons you want to glow and have them use one of the two materials, and you select the polygons you don't want to glow and have them use the second material. And you do this in your modeling program, although I have no practical experience with this, like I mentioned before. Then you apply the glow flag to only the first material after exporting and all that jazz.

And no, I'm not saying you can't use the alpha layer method. Sure, go right ahead, but I did mention the implications of using this method, which will make your model look not pretty. So I suggest you use the method I wrote above.

The problem I have with doing it your way, is that I've already made a moderately large map with these platforms, all of which use this texture, so making a seperate mesh for each individual light would be extremely painful to do:
I worded my question rather badly. What I meant was, is it completely impossible to make some parts of one material glow (ie, limit the alpha channel to a certain selection, which will glow, or something along those lines which uses just the one material?

Some more questions also:
What impact does the lightglow.tga have ingame? When I used the meshtool, i checked out my model via hex-editing, and it now has a texture named lightglow.tga.
Another question. I've made my original texture extremely transparent by editing the layer's opacity down to a really low value, but it still glows completely white. I'm wondering if there's something else I'm missing?

EDIT - Here's my .tga files with transparency -

you do not need seperate meshes if you want only parts of a model to glow and you should not use meshtool to add the glow.if you use meshtool the glowstrength will be deteerminated by the glowmap "lightglow.tga", not by the diffuse textures alphachannel. therefore you must use andes xsizetool or add the glow by hexediting.
i explained the ins and outs of this glow here.
what you need to do in xsi (when hexeditig the glow) is extracting all glowing polys (for easier modifying), apply a new material with the same texture as before. then change one letter of the texturename in the sourcepath of the material.
now export as usual. open the modle with a hexeditor, search for the modified texturename, correct it and "02" in the fifth place after ATRB to make these surfaces glow ingame.

Thanks for the help DarthD.U.C.K.!

DarthD.U.C.K. wrote: what you need to do in xsi (when hexeditig the glow) is extracting all glowing polys (for easier modifying), apply a new material with the same texture as before. then change one letter of the texturename in the sourcepath of the material.
now export as usual. open the modle with a hexeditor, search for the modified texturename, correct it and "02" in the fifth place after ATRB to make these surfaces glow ingame.

Sorry for being pretty noobish with all this, but by extracting the poly's would I just be duplicating the originals and adding them to a different materials? The reason I ask this is that I've created and UV'ed my model in Blender, which is why I used the meshtool for glow, and I'm wondering if this is equally possible to achieve in Blender, which allows for multiple materials (obviously). Also, would I need to displace the extracted poly's slightly, so that the glowing ones are slightly behind the original surface?

You don't need to duplicate the polys at all. I've done exactly what DUCK is talking about using Blender. You just select the polygons you want to glow, and give them a separate texture from the normal non-glowing model. Here's an example of this:

I made those in Blender, way back in August of 2010. Ah, memories. Anyway I digress. Notice the red glowing triangles? Those are a separate red texture, with glow applied to that material. You're not duplicating the polygons, just giving them a new texture/material.

Sorry, but I don't think I'm making myself clear. I haven't given the lights there own polies - its just a texture with the lights built in - I'm applying this texture to a flat, rectangular face, not complex, mesh-based lights. Its all in the texture!

If you're talking about that, I apologise, as it will mean I have completely misread your post.

EDIT: Here's a pic of my mesh (I've made it one big model to make scaling easier).

I see. Well, I don't know what to tell you. You know what has to be done to achieve the effect you desire, it's up to you to do it or not. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

dont worry, as long as the glowing parts covers more than two thirds of your texture you dont need to make the lights seperate polys. just extract the long polys with the lights on them and do what i said. but remove the triangels from the polys, the glow doesnt like triangles.