LightWave to DTS Exporter Documentation
For Version 17-05-02

Written by David Wyand

 

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Using Surfaces
In LightWave, how you've set up your object's surfaces will affect the display of the object in the Torque engine. Below is a summary of what surface channels affect what.

Colour
If you place an image in the colour channel of a surface, then that image will be mapped to the polygon's that use the surface. This behaves just like in LightWave. Note that all mapping types are supported including UV, other than cube mapping. You can take a look at any of the included scene files to see how to map an image.

Reflection
If you have an alpha channel in your image used in the surface's colour channel, then this alpha channel can affect the environmental reflections for the exported object. The whiter the alpha channel, the more reflective the surface will be. Also, the value in the reflection channel of the LW surface editor is multiplied against the alpha channel to produce the final reflection amount. For example, if the alpha channel is pure white (100% reflection) and the surface's reflection channel is set to 50%, then the final environmental reflection amount in the DTS file will be 50%. See the BFG.LWS scene for an example of using environmental reflections.

Programmers should note that a surface's Reflection set to 0.0% will cause the 'no environmental reflections' flag to be set for the material.

In the future, a separate image map applied to the reflection channel may be used instead of the alpha channel of the surface's colour channel.

Note: you'll need to have environmental reflections activated in your Torque Engine's preferences to actually see the environmental reflections.

Transparency
A value greater than zero for the surface's Transparency channel will cause the material to be transparent. If there is an alpha channel in the surface's colour image, then it will be used to control the material's transparency. In this case, you'll still need to set the surface's Transparency channel to a non-zero value for the alpha channel to have an affect. In the alpha channel, black is 100% transparent, and white is opaque.

If you wish to have additive or subtractive transparency for the surface, you'll have to add the special TorqueDTS_MaterialAttributes plug-in to the LW surface. Double click on it to open its interface:

The Transparency Type parameter has the following options: Normal, Additive, Subtractive. The selection you make will cause the appropriate flag to be written for the material.

Self Illumination
A value greater than zero for the surface's Luminosity channel will cause the material to ignore all lighting and shadows. The 'self illumination' flag is set for the material.

 

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