Texture shadows

Texture shadows in Portal 2

Texture shadows allow transparent model surfaces (not brushes or displacements!) to cast baked lightmap shadows.

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.

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.

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