Masked Textures

 

Ok before we start I am presuming you know the basic aspects of using Worldcraft if you don't, Then take a look at Blinks Basic Tutorials. :]

Masked Textures can be highly useful in many aspects for making ladders, grates and so forth
In this Tutorial we will learn how to make Masked Textures our best friend :P

Ok, lets start off by making a simple room with the Block tool (Shift+B) and place an info_player_start inside the room

Ok now make a block on the left side of the room that is half the width and half the height of our room

Now we are going to place a ladder on the front of the brush we just created so you can scale up the block to the top. Ok so crate a new brush with a Width of 32 and a height 160 the height of your brush may dither thou if 160 is to short just make it longer :]

(NOTE: Worldcraft displays the brush Width and Height in the status bar located at the bottom of the screen)

Ok now this is the part where the masked texture comes in. Bring up your Texture browser (Shift+A) and click Browse and type { into the Filter. A load of pictures should appear, all with blue backgrounds. These are Masked Textures. Now in the filter type in {ladder and pick a ladder texture that you like by double clicking it. Now right click on the ladder - the texture you just selected should appear on it if you make a mistake just press Ctrl+Z to Undo it. :]

In game the blue turns transparent allowing you to create this ladder and such. But in order for the blue background to be transparent we have to change the brush we are using as our ladder into an Entity

To do this press Ctrl+T to bring up the Entity selection box in the filter type in func_wall

Now for the Render Mode set it to 'Solid
For the FX Amount set it to 255. FX Amount determines how much blue appears in the image while in game. Obviously we want it set to Max (255) while 1 would give the texture a totally blue background (we don't want that :]) ok now close the Entity box

Now so select the ladder and press Ctrl+C to copy it then deselect it (just click any where on the grid) now press Ctrl+V to paste the brush. Now align it exactly the same as the ladder right in front of it

Keep the copied brush selected and bring up the Entity Box again (CTrl+T) you will get a pop up box asking whether you'd like to keep the old entity, press no - and type in the Filter func_ladder and close the box func_ladder is basically the part that actually allows you to climb the ladder not the Texture.

Ok bring up the texture browser again and select {fence2 now select the Block tool and create 2 brushes on both sides of the ladder on the upper level and make it func_wall and give it the exact same options as the ladder

And here is the result

If you spend a little time messing about you can use the masked textures to great effect

 

By Rubber Ducky