Burning texture for models?

[lambda]

When you burn someonee in TF2, theres a burning kind of texture over them. How do I get that in SFM? http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/3/30/Fire.png?t=20110623070232

[PenguinOfPwnage]

I think it has something to do with particles.

[R234]

There is a particle system, but I think Lambda is talking about the animated fire overlay that's on models.

It's possible to control it in SFM, but it's a bit compex. You first have to find the material (.vmt) files that are associated with the model you want the overlay on, and open them in notepad. Say for instance I want to activate the fire overlay on the RED Sniper. I have to go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\SourceFilmmaker\game\tf_movies\materials\models\player\sniper\, and open sfm_sniper_red.vmt, sfm_sniper_skin.vmt and hwm\sniper_head_red.vmt.

In all of the .vmt's, you need to do two things: first, if "$detailblendfactor" isn't 0, change it to that. If it already is at zero, don't touch it. Second, you need to comment out the whole BurnLevel proxy, by adding two slashes (//) in front of all of its lines, like so:

 //		"BurnLevel"
//		{
//			"resultVar" "$detailblendfactor"
//		} 

Save your changes. You can then launch SFM (if it was already, type mat_reloadallmaterials in the console to refresh the material definition).

Once you have the model you want to set ablaze, right-click its animation set > add override materials. Right-click it again > show in element viewer > model. Once in the element viewer, expand the materials array at the bottom, and look for the materials whose vmt's you messed with earlier.

Righ-click one of them > add attribute > float. Call it $detailblendfactor. Right-click the material again > create animationset for element. Click OK. Do the same for all the needed materials.

Back in the animation set editor, you should notice (a) new set(s) with the material name(s):
http://i.imgur.com/DS1bz7L.jpg
Which, when selected, give you a slider that controls the intensity of the fire overlay:
http://i.imgur.com/qO6Gvzd.jpg

[raptornx01]

can you do this kind of thing with any model?

[R234]

As long as all of those lines are present in the .vmt, it should work:

 	"$detail" "effects/tiledfire/fireLayeredSlowTiled512.vtf"	
	"$detailscale" "5"
	"$detailblendfactor" 0
	"$detailblendmode" 6
	"Proxies"
	{
		"AnimatedTexture"
		{
			"animatedtexturevar" "$detail"
			"animatedtextureframenumvar" "$detailframe"
			"animatedtextureframerate" 30
		}
	} 

As we saw many times, some models don't like detailblendmode 6 in SFM, so that rules those out. As far as I know there's no other restriction though.

[raptornx01]

hmmm.... interesting.

[0bsidianFire]

Thanks for this, it works like a charm. Just wanted to add that in the current version of SFM, making an animation set for the materials will not give you a $detailblendfactor variable. What you can do instead is edit the $detailblendfactor value right in the element viewer.