Making Windows

Window tutorial for UT2k3

I'll just cover the basics of windows creation: that is to say, how to create a glass-like material and how to make a window using it.

Creating a texture

You don't really need anything fancy, a very simple texture will do the trick. It doesn't even have to tile What is more important is the alpha channel. It will determine how translucent the windows will be. Create a new mask. In PSP click on the new mask button, then hold CTRL+ALT+V to show it and CRTL+K to toggle mask editing.

In PSP the New Mask button is at the top of the layer box

The white parts of the mask will be transparent, the black ones will be opaque. When you're satisfied with your alpha channel, store it inside the image (In PSP you have to use the Save in an alpha channel in the Mask menu), hide the mask and save your image (it has to be a .TGA file).

the texture and the alpha channel

Creating the material

Open UnrealEd, import your .TGA file. Use the MyLevel package.

Now you have to create a reflective material. Choose File → New. Use MyLevel again, maybe a Shaders group if you don't want to get lost with your textures, and pick Combiner in the combo list.

For the first material, use your glass texture. For the second, use a TexEnvMap, there are a lot of these in CubeMaps.utx (for instance TexEnvMap'Chrome_cp.Walls.TexEnvMap0', it's not a real cube map but it works fine too). Select CO_Alphablend_With_Mask in the CombineOperation list. The mask defines the way the two material will blend. Use the glass texture once again (since it contains an alpha channel). You may have to set InvertMask to true.

Now we need to make it translucent. Create a new material, a Shader. Use the combiner you just created for the Diffuse slot and the glass texture for the Opacity slot.

you should have something like that

Creating the window

You could use the glass material on a regular brush but it's not the best way to do. Use your red builder brush to create a rectangular window (128x128x4 for instance), select the glass shader and click on the Convert to Static Mesh button, name it Glass_128x128x4 and save it in MyLevel or in a custom package.

Now you have a ready-to-use window. You can still resize it with the DrawScale3D fields. Changes made to the static mesh will affect every instance in your level. Moreover, using a static mesh allows you to turn the windows into movers (to make them breakable).

the final result

Most of the time windows are too dark, you can fix that easily by setting the ScaleGlow value to something around 64 in the Display properties of your static meshes. Note that it can also be done by using the Self Illumination layer of a shader but it's a little more restricive.

~~[Download the test map]~~ This link is broken.

Category Mapping
Category To Do – remove or fix link to test map (possibly create new test map)