Trick that simulates live security cameras!

Big Lou

L3: Member
Mar 17, 2008
120
27
I came up with a trick to simulate live security cameras. Unfortunately, it can only be seen by spectators... but nonetheless it's a neat little addition.

What you do is make a texture with a screen in it and make the screen transparent. What I did was add semi-transparent green scanlines to enhance the illusion. Place an observer camera in front of it looking out at an area of your map... and you get:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejTbvRoRJiY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejTbvRoRJiY[/ame]
 
T

The Asylum

Wasn't quite what I was hoping for, but hell, what works works, right?
 

laghlagh

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 15, 2008
389
53
hahaha that's great
 

Armadillo of Doom

Group Founder, Lover of Pie
aa
Oct 25, 2007
949
1,228
Very cool indeed. I think I understand how this works, but I too would love to see a step by step tutorial w/ some pics. I'm definitely gonna try this out when I get home from school. In the mean time, nice work m8 :)
 

Big Lou

L3: Member
Mar 17, 2008
120
27
Wow, I didn't realize how dark the rest of the scene was.... I guess my monitor at home is ultra-bright. The scene around the screen is supposed to be much brighter.

Hopefully this will be better to understand:

As you can see, everything you see in that video is in essence a single texture. I originally created that security desk scene in hammer, but took a screenshot of it looking at the monitor. I turned that screenshot into a texture, and made the screen portion semi-transparent. I then applied this texture onto a brush face that overlooked a certain portion of the world I wanted to put on screen (the area you see the engineer running around). An observer camera is positioned behind this brush pointing at the texture with the screen, and through it, the area I wanted shown.

screenik4.png
 

Big Lou

L3: Member
Mar 17, 2008
120
27
Actually, what I made were separate overlays that are just text saying things like:

b_001_spawn

and cryptic stuff like that so it'd look more like security footage. You could do anything to the screen really, just as long as it's at least somewhat transparent.
 

Big Lou

L3: Member
Mar 17, 2008
120
27
It's not hard to understand. Just make a texture with a transparent screen or box somewhere on it. Put it on a brush. Point an observer camera at a part in your level. Stick the brush with the screen texture on it in front of the camera.

When you are in spectate mode, you can view this camera and it looks like you're looking at a security monitor.
 

Giver

L1: Registered
Apr 20, 2008
17
0
Could you upload the raw texture so I can see how you did it?
 

Big Lou

L3: Member
Mar 17, 2008
120
27
Either:

A) Put the camera in a small room attached to an exterior wall and have one side be textured the screen and the other the normal wall texture, or

B) Put the brush with the screen texture somewhere where you can't see the textured side as a player and nodraw or skybox the other sides.