Render Type 01: Glow

I would like to say that even though I am covering Glow in this section I STRONGLY SUGGEST NOT USING THIS RENDER TYPE. There are other Render Types (11, emissive, check box glow) that are much easier to manipulate and provide better results.

As a bit of an example this type of Glow is basically the “Hardedge” of all our glows. Things are either going to Glow (uncontrollably and very strongly) or they will not.

1.) Implementation

After using XSI ZE Tools to create your material, Click ZEIFY to enable ZE flags to the material. If you then click Edit you should see a pop up screen like this. For this type of glow we need 3 things. Our diffuse Texture, a glow map (which needs to be called in the Texture 2 box above it is “testcube_base.tga” I am using as my glowmap) And all you need to do is set your render type to 1.

This is my diffuse texture. This type of glow will use the colour from the Diffuse texture to use as your glow colour. It is of some important that in order for a colour to glow from this diffuse using this specific flag for glow the colour needs to be above 128 (or 50.2%) in AT LEAST 2 CHANNELS. (eg. for glow to work you need at least R:128, B:128)

This is a copy of our glow map, this operates in greyscale, and basically the lighter colours will glow and the darker ones will not. Much like our diffuse the glow map will only allow affect and allow glow if the colour is above 50.2% (so R:128, G:128, B:128 minimum for glow to work and again this will only work if the diffuse in that area has at least 2 colour channels above 128 or 50.2%) Remember with this type of glow SHADE IN THE GLOW MAP DOES NOT MATTER. This is either going to Glow or it is not.

In game this is our test cube, and as you can see it is very very bright.

THINGS THAT DO NOT AFFECT GLOW:

The diffuses alpha channel for this type of glow has zero effect on glow.

The Glowmaps alpha will have ZERO effect on this type of glow.

Vertex Lighting has No effect.

ZE lighting has no effect.

Shadows have no effect.

This glow is absolute. It is either on, or it is off.