Texture shadows

Texture shadows in Portal 2

Texture shadows model surfaces (not brushes or displacements!) to cast baked lightmap shadows based upon transparency or translucency from $alphatest or $translucent.

To enable model texture shadows, add -TextureShadows to the VRAD parameters.

(only in ) To enable brush and displacement texture shadows, add -worldtextureshadows (and optionally -translucentshadows for translucent shadows) to the VRAD parameters.

Bug: -worldtextureshadows and -translucentshadows are non-functional.  (tested in: newer versions of VRAD)

Important:Only the alpha channels of the textures are used for shadow casting calculations. For example, stained glass windows using the Refract shader will be treated as opaque, as will materials using $additive without $translucent.

Bug:VRAD is unable to calculate texture shadows for textures using DXT3 compression. Use DXT5 instead.  (tested in: )

Models

In QC

Add $casttextureshadows to the model's QC file to enable texture shadows.

Example:

$modelname "props_grate/metal_grate_64.mdl"
$model body "metal_grate_64.smd"
$staticprop

$cdmaterials "metal/"

$surfaceprop "metal"
$contents "grate"

$casttextureshadows

lights.rad

Texture shadows can be enabled on any prop without editing and recompiling the QC through the RAD file.

Example

forcetextureshadow props_underground/walkway_128a.mdl
forcetextureshadow props_underground/walkway_128b.mdl