There's a 'save map' button in the entity editor that'll save new or modified func_fx entities into the .map file.

Yeah, I tried that as well but then when I opened my map in Radiant the changes still didn't take effect.

oh, ack, I thought you were referring to the save in the normal effect editor and not the entity editor. Sorry for the mix-up.

So this is from a stand-alone instance of the game, and not a second copy while the map is open in the editor in the first copy?

Here's what I tried:
1) Place func_fx's in map, BSP and save.
2) Close Radiant completely, load up Q4, load my map and type editFX (I get crashes if I try to run multiple instances of Q4 at the same time so that is why I can't have >1 instance of the game)
3) Stumble my way through adding an effect (I really wish that 1st video worked..

). Then I tried every save button I could find in the editFX program.
4) Load map back up in Radiant. No changes took effect (no pun intended).

One of the best tools to use in the FXEditor is actually something I never covered... I kept meaning to, but just never go around to it.

When you have your map loaded and you run editFX from the console, click the View menu in the FX Editor and then "Entity Editor".

You can then choose all of your FX entities from a pulldown list. Once you've selected one, you can alter its properties and tweak it. When you're done, click the "Save Map" button. Check the console for a message about your map being saved.

You can also use this entity editor to drop new FX entities into your map in front of your player's view, meaning, very similar to the sound editor and speakers, you can literally noclip your way around your map in the FX Editor and plop down and tweak all of your FX.

I did all of my FX editing in singleplayer mode given some of the saving issues that came up when trying to make changes to a map that was spawned on a server.

Let me know if that helps.

Goliath

goliathvt,
great video tutorials, I liked the small file size vs. hires video

The only thing that had me wondering for a moment, how to get the effect into the box map, or the map one is actually working on. But that was mentioned 2 posts up.

The only thing that kinda surprised my, was the fact that editFX changes the .fx on the fly! So folks will want to be very careful not to destroy their "hand coded" .fx (e.g. lose comments added), or even worse to change original .fx files.

In hindsight, editFX must change the files for them to show, but coming from Q3A where almost nothing is in real time it was a shock :p

Perhaps I'm being a bit lazy, but why can't I browse for materials or sounds/soundshaders inside this editor? Seems like I have to find everything I need with the sound and map editors, then copy / paste into the fx boxes.

Hey guys, notice how a lot of files are missing from http://pcgamemods.com/mod/16948.html ? Ever care to reupload so many here, so many there? Of course that would be a daunting task so naturally only a few at a time over the course of days or whatever is convenient, but overall the feedback, picture images and links have gone down considerably over the past 4 years or so. I know it's an old game but hell classic doom probably has much more modding and mod tutorials etc.. on the internet than this!

Quake 4 Video Tutorial

The FX Editor

Grab it here:
http://files.filefront.com/Q4_FX_Ed_Vid ... einfo.html

Mirror:
http://pcgamemods.com/mod/16948.html

Link Updated: No new content in the update, but I split the video into 2 parts to fix the video/audio sync issues and fixed a video segement that was out of order in the original release.

---

This tutorial video will provide an introduction to
the Quake 4 FX editor.

Runtime: 48 minutes 13 seconds

The video was encoded with the xvid codec, which can
be found here:
http://divx-digest.com/software/xvid.html

http://pcgamemods.com/mod/16948.html

Enjoy!

Goliath

goliathvt wrote:

Quake 4 Video Tutorial

The FX Editor

Grab it here:
http://files.filefront.com/Q4_FX_Editor ... einfo.html

This tutorial video will provide an introduction to
the Quake 4 FX editor.

Runtime: 48 minutes 13 seconds

The video was encoded with the xvid codec, which can
be found here:
http://divx-digest.com/software/xvid.html

Enjoy!

Goliath

wowzers, 48 minutes, that's a friggin' epic! Gotta get the slippers for this one...

Brain Trepaning wrote:

goliathvt wrote:

Quake 4 Video Tutorial

The FX Editor

Grab it here:
http://files.filefront.com/Q4_FX_Editor ... einfo.html

This tutorial video will provide an introduction to
the Quake 4 FX editor.

Runtime: 48 minutes 13 seconds

The video was encoded with the xvid codec, which can
be found here:
http://divx-digest.com/software/xvid.html

Enjoy!

Goliath

wowzers, 48 minutes, that's a friggin' epic! Gotta get the slippers for this one...

Hiya guys this is my first post here so first I wanna say hi to everyone.

Goliath I watched the tutorial and have to say I thought it was pretty well done. Everything was well described. I now feel moved to try and make my own FX.

One thing I did notice is that around 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through the audio was a little faster than exactly what was going on on the screen. Wasn't sure if mabey you recorded video than the audio or if you are just used to working a little quicker than you speak(I get this problem from time to time)

.

Looking forward to any other tutorials you may do.

In a nutshell, EXCELENT WORK!.

Cheers guys.

Yah, it's a problem with the compression format I used... the longer the vid goes on, it gets more and more outta sync. By the time I had put it all together tho, I wasn't feeling up to recreating it or re-splitting it into smaller chunks. It's not "too" bad, and you can still tell what's going on (I think). On the other hand, you can put the video on fullscreen running a 1280x1024 resolution with almost zero quality loss... not bad for a 47MB video that runs for nearly 50 mins.

If there's a big request for it, I can split it up into 2 parts to mostly fix the out-of-sync problem.

Goliath

Wow, looks like it's movie night tonight

.

goliathvt wrote:

Yah, it's a problem with the compression format I used... the longer the vid goes on, it gets more and more outta sync. By the time I had put it all together tho, I wasn't feeling up to recreating it or re-splitting it into smaller chunks. It's not "too" bad, and you can still tell what's going on (I think). On the other hand, you can put the video on fullscreen running a 1280x1024 resolution with almost zero quality loss... not bad for a 47MB video that runs for nearly 50 mins.

If there's a big request for it, I can split it up into 2 parts to mostly fix the out-of-sync problem.

Goliath

It's not a problem at all. I could follow along perfectly.

Also the no quality loss at a high res with only 47 megs is awsome! I love watching full screen so I don't get distracted by background items.

Are you planning on making more or was this just a test run for the FX editor?

Cheers.

Well I've got a few other video tutorials... they were on PCGameMods.com, tho, so I'm sure their links are broken.

I do plan on making at least one more FX-related tutorial where I walk through the process of making an FX with custom content, and build a fairly complex FX with all the pieces. Other than that, the only other video tutorial that I personally think "needs" to be done is one for the AF (Articulated Figure) editor... no one's ever done one that I know of and most people have trouble with AFs in general, it seems. I've personally not done a tut. on it because I suck at 3d modeling/rigging, which is sort of a pre-req to even using the AF.

My little AOheLl buddy that I've used for some other tutorials is about the extent of my 3d animation skills....

So... if someone supplies me a properly rigged character in Maya and MD5 format, I'd be happy to use 'em for the AF tutorial.

Goliath

Updated the links to my vid tut with some slight fixes. No new content was added, I just fixed a few things.

Goliath

i'm really impressed with the fx editor. you can do almost anything! could have a lot fun with that.

nice tutorial by the way.

nothing to be tought. its straight forward. like the whole engine Vs unreal editors etc. and 100% scripts in notepad

port66 wrote:

nothing to be tought. its straight forward. like the whole engine Vs unreal editors etc. and 100% scripts in notepad

Eh... What???

pbmax wrote:

i'm really impressed with the fx editor. you can do almost anything! could have a lot fun with that.

nice tutorial by the way.

True that. The Q4 Particles are quite an Improvement over the D3 ones, Feature- and Editor-wise

.

Wow! That tutorial was helpful as hell!

I'm already making my own FXs now, but I'm having a problem with one:

I made a simple, drop-of-water-hits-puddle FX. There are four stages:

1) A sprite that resembles a drop that fades in and out as it falls.
2) An oriented sprite on the ground that resembles a small "ripple" when the drop (#1) hits the wet surface.
3) An ambient dripping sound (not really needed)
4) A sprite that produces 3 to 4 half-sized drops, it resembles a small "splash" coming from the first, bigger drop after impact with the ground.

The problem here is whenever I add any new stages after the first four--no matter how long a delay I put in between #4 and #5, no matter what time I start the next stage (#5), number four only goes exactly when five does. #4 is supposed to go in sync with #2 (the "ripple"), but waits until #5 kicks in. Why?

If you don't know what I mean, I can always send you the FX.

iceheart wrote:

port66 wrote:

nothing to be tought. its straight forward. like the whole engine Vs unreal editors etc. and 100% scripts in notepad

Eh... What???

1>choose a fx [sprite = texture. pathto/filename no extenstion]
2>click on the origin tab. up/down/left and right
3>length - forward/up
3>rotate

the rest is alpha blending which is easily understood

for lightning.

choose electric.
find a electricity texture, best is probaly [gfx\effects\electricity\electric_blue] for the sprite
goto length. put forward to 60min/500max, set the width to around 40.
click on teh motion tab. and set the forks to 3. dont go below 0.1. because quake will crash. and set the rate to 3

then add a light. and set the depth. and always stay on. click on motion tab and do some alpha blending. and tweak the settings till the light kind of matches the electricity

heres lightning.fx just made. and here a avi. which is xvid codec if you have it avi

Is there a written tutorial about this?

This was an excellent tut, thanks heaps for your time and effort I appreciate this. Please release more !!

It might be a good idea to upload a copy to PCG now that it's back online again.

Done.

G

Ok, I 'm trying to do something real simple. I've loaded up the FX editor in game and gotten the effect I want, but how do I actually save it in the map? Once I exit the FX editor, I seem to lose all my changes, even after hitting the "Save.." button.

Maybe this was in the videos but I didn't see it. Of course, the first video's audio didn't seem to work (cut out every half second), so maybe it was in there?

EDIT: Nevermind, I just did it the old-fashioned way in Radiant's entity editor.

There's a 'save map' button in the entity editor that'll save new or modified func_fx entities into the .map file.

Yeah, I tried that as well but then when I opened my map in Radiant the changes still didn't take effect.

oh, ack, I thought you were referring to the save in the normal effect editor and not the entity editor. Sorry for the mix-up.

So this is from a stand-alone instance of the game, and not a second copy while the map is open in the editor in the first copy?

Here's what I tried:
1) Place func_fx's in map, BSP and save.
2) Close Radiant completely, load up Q4, load my map and type editFX (I get crashes if I try to run multiple instances of Q4 at the same time so that is why I can't have >1 instance of the game)
3) Stumble my way through adding an effect (I really wish that 1st video worked..

). Then I tried every save button I could find in the editFX program.
4) Load map back up in Radiant. No changes took effect (no pun intended).

One of the best tools to use in the FXEditor is actually something I never covered... I kept meaning to, but just never go around to it.

When you have your map loaded and you run editFX from the console, click the View menu in the FX Editor and then "Entity Editor".

You can then choose all of your FX entities from a pulldown list. Once you've selected one, you can alter its properties and tweak it. When you're done, click the "Save Map" button. Check the console for a message about your map being saved.

You can also use this entity editor to drop new FX entities into your map in front of your player's view, meaning, very similar to the sound editor and speakers, you can literally noclip your way around your map in the FX Editor and plop down and tweak all of your FX.

I did all of my FX editing in singleplayer mode given some of the saving issues that came up when trying to make changes to a map that was spawned on a server.

Let me know if that helps.

Goliath

goliathvt,
great video tutorials, I liked the small file size vs. hires video

The only thing that had me wondering for a moment, how to get the effect into the box map, or the map one is actually working on. But that was mentioned 2 posts up.

The only thing that kinda surprised my, was the fact that editFX changes the .fx on the fly! So folks will want to be very careful not to destroy their "hand coded" .fx (e.g. lose comments added), or even worse to change original .fx files.

In hindsight, editFX must change the files for them to show, but coming from Q3A where almost nothing is in real time it was a shock :p

Perhaps I'm being a bit lazy, but why can't I browse for materials or sounds/soundshaders inside this editor? Seems like I have to find everything I need with the sound and map editors, then copy / paste into the fx boxes.

Hey guys, notice how a lot of files are missing from http://pcgamemods.com/mod/16948.html ? Ever care to reupload so many here, so many there? Of course that would be a daunting task so naturally only a few at a time over the course of days or whatever is convenient, but overall the feedback, picture images and links have gone down considerably over the past 4 years or so. I know it's an old game but hell classic doom probably has much more modding and mod tutorials etc.. on the internet than this!