SolidEnergy

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SolidEnergy is a pixel shader available in all Source games since Portal 2. (also in ) It is used for the fizzler, excursion funnel, light bridge, and laser field materials.

Todo: Properly document this!

Todo: Add images

Supported effects

• $flowmap
• $flowbounds
• $translucent
• $additive
• $refract (only in )

Todo: What other effects does this shader support?

Fresnel behavior

$TANGENTTOPACITYRANGES <vector4>

Enables view-based opacity falloff based on tangent t direction, great for cylinders, includes last term for scaling backface opacity.

$TANGENTSOPACITYRANGES <vector4>

Enables view-based opacity falloff based on tangent s direction, great for cylinders, includes last term for scaling backface opacity.

$FRESNELOPACITYRANGES <vector4>

Enables fresnel-based opacity falloff, includes last term for scaling backface opacity.

$NEEDSTANGENTT <boolean>

Set when tangenttopacityranges is defined.

$NEEDSTANGENTS <boolean>

Set when tangentsopacityranges is defined.

Note:When $NEEDSTANGENTT and $NEEDSTANGENTS are both true, $NEEDSTANGENTS is always set to false.

$NEEDSNORMALS <boolean>

Set when fresnelopacityranges is defined.

Powerup and vortex parameters

These material parameters are used to control the power-up animation, and up to two vortexes which normally appear when objects are nearby. They are generally set by the FizzlerVortex proxy.

Tip:A MaterialModify proxy can instead be used to control the effects manually, for custom fizzlers.

$powerup <float>

Sets the progress through the power-up animation, with 0 being fully off and 1 being fully on.

$FLOW_VORTEX1 <boolean>

Whether or not the first vortex is active.

$FLOW_VORTEX_POS1 <vector>

World coordinates of the entity creating the first vortex.

$FLOW_VORTEX2 <boolean>

Whether or not the second vortex is active.

$FLOW_VORTEX_POS2 <vector>

World coordinates of the entity creating the second vortex.

Detail

When using a basetexture, the shader also renders 2 optional detail textures, which are blended with the basetexture. Both of these detail textures use the same syntax of variant parameters as $detail, with "$detail1" or "$detail2" replacing the "$detail" prefix. (eg: $detail1scale 1) This method must be used if the material is to be used on a model, as meshes will not render if a flowmap is applied.

$detail1 <texture>

Detail texture 1

$detail2 <texture>

Detail texture 2

etc

Flowbounds

If a flowmap is used, the material uses an additional texture comprised of three greyscale masks on each of the color channels.

• Red controls the flow speed
• Green controls the tint amount from $flow_color
• Blue controls the additive intensity, such as the ripples of a Fizzler

$flowbounds <texture>

Flowbounds texture

$flow_color <RGB matrix>

Color tint of the flowmap

Refract (only in )

These parameters control the refraction effects added in P2:CE.

Bug:Any transparent textures or sprite effects will not render through this texture. Any func_brush with alpha effects applied to it will render on top of this texture.  [todo tested in?]

$refract <boolean>

Enables refraction effects

$refractscale <float>

Scale of the refraction

$refracteffectscale <float>

Scale of the refraction effect

Type 1 (Flowmap) Example

The example shown below is materials/effects/fizzler.vmt from Portal 2.

SolidEnergy
{
	$basetexture "effects/fizzler_ripples_dim"
	$flowmap "effects/fizzler_flow"
	$flowbounds "effects/fizzler_bounds"
	$FLOW_NOISE_TEXTURE "effects/fizzler_noise"
	$FLOW_UVSCROLLDISTANCE "0.25"
	$FLOW_TIMEINTERVALINSECONDS "1.2"
	$FLOW_NOISE_SCALE 0.003
	$FLOW_LERPEXP 1.5
	$FLOW_WORLDUVSCALE 0.008
	$FLOW_NORMALUVSCALE 0.008
	$FLOW_COLOR "[0.025 0.08 0.1]"
	$FLOW_VORTEX_COLOR "[0.64 2.058 2.56]"
	$surfaceprop glass
	"%keywords" Portal2
	$translucent 1
	$additive 1
	$FLOW_VORTEX_SIZE 35

	"360?$outputintensity" 2.8
	"SonyPS3?$outputintensity" .7
	"srgb_pc?$outputintensity" 2.3
	"!srgb_pc?$outputintensity" 1.7

	Proxies
	{
		FizzlerVortex
		{
		}
	}
}

Type 2 (Basetexture and Detail) Example

The example shown below is materials/effects/projected_wall.vmt from Portal 2.

SolidEnergy
{
      $basetexture "effects/projected_wall"
      $detail1 "effects/projected_wall_draw"
      $detail1scale 1
      $DETAIL1BLENDMODE 1
      $detail2 "effects/projected_wall_noise"
      $detail2scale 1
      $detail2blendmode 0
      $translucent 1
      $additive 1
      $vertexalpha 0
      $vertexcolor 0
      $nocull 1 
      $surfaceprop glass
      "%keywords" Portal2
      $detailscroll1 "[0 0]"
      $detailscroll2 "[0 0]"
      $detail2componentscale "[1 1]"
      $basescroll "[0 0]"
      $basescale "[1 1]"
      "!srgb?$outputintensity" .75
      Proxies
      {
             Sine 
             {
             sinemin 0
             sinemax 0.94
             sineperiod 5
             timeoffset 3
             resultVar "$detailscroll1[0]"
             }
             LinearRamp 
             {
             rate -3
             initialValue 0
             resultVar "$detailscroll1[1]"
             }
             LinearRamp 
             {
             rate 0.18
             initialValue 0
             resultVar "$detailscroll2[1]"
             }
             Sine 
             {
             sinemin 0.99
             sinemax 1.01
             sineperiod 0.125
             timeoffset 0
             resultVar "$detail2componentscale[0]"
             }
             Sine 
             {
             sinemin 0.995
             sinemax 1.005
             sineperiod 0.1
             timeoffset 0.05
             resultVar "$basescale[0]"
             }
             LinearRamp 
             {
             rate 0.15
             initialValue 0
             resultVar "$basescroll[1]"
             }
             TextureTransform
             {
             translateVar $detailscroll1
             resultVar $detail1texturetransform
             }
             TextureTransform
             {
             translateVar $detailscroll2
             scaleVar $detail2componentscale
             resultVar $detail2texturetransform
             }
             TextureTransform
             {
             translateVar $basescroll
             scaleVar $basescale
             resultVar $basetexturetransform
             }
      }
}