Material that doesn't block or cast light

[FloofCollie]

I'm looking to create a variant of nodraw that doesn't block light (skybox won't work because it casts light) while still being able to seal areaportals. VDC says Dark Messiah has this variant but I don't own the game to check. What would I need to put to get this effect?

 

[DrSquishy]

I'm looking to create a variant of nodraw that doesn't block light (skybox won't work because it casts light) while still being able to seal areaportals. VDC says Dark Messiah has this variant but I don't own the game to check. What would I need to put to get this effect?

If you're referring to nodrawinvisible, this is the VMT they use - might not work properly in tf2 though.

"LightmappedGeneric"
{
    // Original shader: BaseTimesLightmap
    "$basetexture" "Tools/toolsnodrawinvisible"
    "$translucent" "1"
    "%compilenodraw" 1
    "%keywords" "nodraw"
}

There's also nodrawnoshadow:

"LightmappedGeneric"
{
    "$basetexture" "Tools/toolsnodrawnoshadow"
    "%compilenodraw" 1
    "%compilenoshadow" 1
    "%keywords" "noshadow,tool,tools"
}

Hope this helps

 

[Idolon]

Depending on the scenario, you might be able to use a closed areaportal.

 

[FloofCollie]

There's also nodrawnoshadow:

thanks a lot, this worked perfectly! this isn't really important but do you know what I should put for the basetexture? if I put the vmt in tf/materials it shows up as a missing texture in Hammer despite basetexture apparently pointing to nodraw

 

[DrSquishy]

thanks a lot, this worked perfectly! this isn't really important but do you know what I should put for the basetexture? if I put the vmt in tf/materials it shows up as a missing texture in Hammer despite basetexture apparently pointing to nodraw

if basetexture is already pointing at "Tools/toolsnodraw", the only thing I can think of is copying the nodraw vtf from tf2_textures_dir.vpk to be next to the vmt..should work by default though, even though it's in a vpk

 

[worMatty]

@FloofCollie I'm very interested to know what you're trying to do, if it's not inconvenient for you to explain.