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Blending an image with another

by Boris The Sailor · in Artist Corner · 09/10/2011 (9:31 am) · 4 replies

Hey guys, i was wondering if it's possible to have a material with blending enabled apply only on a certain object or layer.
To better explain what i mean, i put three images, one with my blend layer (a beam of light) behind the two layers, one between, and one in front. What i'm looking for is having that blend layer only apply to the foremost set of images (the mushrooms) and not the background. Is something like this possible? I'm using iTorque.

i17.photobucket.com/albums/b66/homeworld4/shrooms.gif
Thanks!
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Torque Owner Boris The Sailor
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#1
09/13/2011 (11:07 pm)
No one has any ideas at all? Tried looking through the archives, but all posts mentioning this either involved heavy coding, were horribly outdated, or both. Help me out guys!

Torque Owner Jesse James Oliger
#2
09/16/2011 (12:40 pm)
I'm not too familiar with iTorque, but in general a blending layer will typically affect everything below it in the layer order. If you want a beam of light to only affect your foreground objects I would say the easiest way to do it is to bake that light effect into your assets ( in this case the mushrooms }. Then take that light beam asset and use it as a regular layer with a slight transparency so the background will show through with out the additive effect you seem to be getting now. Conversely you could cut the beam into the shape of the mushroom which will give you the additive blend only on those pixles.

Torque Owner Boris The Sailor
Default Studio Name
#3
09/19/2011 (9:13 am)
Thanks for the reply jesse! Indeed, i was looking more like for a way to mask the light effect so it only shows up in the mushroom, which isn't something that seems to be supported by torque at the moment, unfortunately. The reason i needed something like this is mostly for ease of use and optimization (being able to make animated light beams and effects throughout my game with just a few beam images, while using generic sprites, as opposed to a large number of instances of the same sprite under different lighting situations. And while masking the light manually would work well, it's a bit time consuming to do it everywhere i need an effect. Also, being able to move the mask while keeping the effect still would have allowed me to put things like drop shadow effects on mobile elements (such as a blimp), effects that look absolutely insane in motion (3.bp.blogspot.com/_nbZutyH7xh8/Syfn8QBIsvI/AAAAAAAAAPo/1xPlC8LAbYE/s1600/rocketb... )

Maybe i could somehow convince my coder friend to look into it and spend some time messing with the engine, but it's unfortunate i can't do it natively in the editor. Thanks again for the insight!

Torque Owner Jesse James Oliger
#4
09/23/2011 (12:07 pm)
You got it man! Good luck, and let us know if you find a good solution.