Glowing materials on DTS shapes

#1 There isn't much you can do (as far as I know) to get a DTS object to "glow" without faking it. You may look into purchasing the Torque and adding a filter shader using CG or something. That's the best I can think of.

#2 I have the Torque engine source - I would like to avoid using a shader if possible since that would only work on the higher end cards. What are some ways of 'faking it'?

#3 Hmm, fxDBlight can be mounted on dts shapes, and timed for indefinate. With some tweaking on the output, you could probably create close to what you want.

#4 You can combine a couple of effects to get what you want:

fxSwarm to create dancing lights:
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=4163

Particle emitters for objects:
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=4096

Particle editor for creating particle systems:
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=3213

#5 What I would do (and I have actually thought about this) is look at the interior lighting code. That is where lightmaps are constructed, and would probably be the easiest way to get what you want. Then it's a matter of specifying what textures are self-illuminating, and just set their lightmaps to 100% or whatever.

Now that I'm typing, another method came to mind. OpenGL has material attributes, and emmission (glowing, self-light) is one of them. You could make a special case for a certain texture that would set this attribute to render that texture, then switch it back afterward.

At this point I can't help you beyond what I've said... it's been too long since I dabbled with OpenGL.

#6 Just set the dts to unlit... and add a dynamic light (fxlight).
With the right texture an unlit object looks like its glowing, add the light to let the effect look more realistic (and affect the enviroment)