Glass Tutorial

Create your windows using 3 dimensional boxes, NOT flat planes. Putting a texture on a flat plane will not work.

Create a transparent image in gimp, photoshop, whatever you want and name it “window_ca.tga” for example. When you open up your image software, make sure the base layer is a “transparent layer” and not a “background layer”. If it's a background layer it won't work.

Convert “window_ca.tga” to window_ca.paa“ in Texview2, it should look like grey if its truly transparent.

If not, back to the drawing board in your image software and make sure it's transparent.

Create the alpha .rvmat file for this window using this code:

ambient[] = { 1, 1, 1, 1 };
diffuse[] = { 1, 1, 1, 1 };
forcedDiffuse[] = { 0, 0, 0, 0 };
emmisive[] = { 0, 0, 0, 1 };
specular[] = { 1, 1, 1, 0 };
specularPower = 5;
renderFlags[] = { "NoAlphaWrite" };
nextPass = "ca\data\sklo-pass2.rvmat";
PixelShaderID = "Glass";
VertexShaderID = "Glass";
class Stage1
{
	texture = "#(ai,64,64,1)fresnelGlass()";
	uvSource = "none";
};

Apply the “window_ca.paa” texture to those windows you made. Just hi-light them all, press “A”, load the “window_ca.paa” texture, press “B” to background map it to the window. Now press “A” again to return to normal mode.

While you have your windows still selected (hi-lighted) click on Faces → Face Properties this will open up the window.

In the top pane of this window you will see: v1, v2, v3, texture & material etc… You need to hi-light all the current faces listed in the upper pane, then you will choose a material file, browse to that file ensuring it's inside the folder your using to make the model. Click apply to apply it to all the faces you selected.

It will now look just like my example for face properties and show the .rvmat file applied as a material to all the surfaces you selected.

Done, it should work now. Good luck!

Side note: This works with the models original LOD. In cases where you have very small confined spaces, such as in a cockpit pilots LOD view, when looking left & right the panes from the window will probably interfere with the view making it for a very frustrating modeling experience as it will block out some parts of your model from that particular view point. In other words parts of your model may appear to not be there in pilots view or drivers view for that matter. Whatever view you are using from inside the model this may go the same for. I've found that vehicles with a larger interior have better results with the glass and don't interfere as much.

This tutorial was written by Rip31st.