F    I    R    E

Fire can make or break the realism in your map.

     Fist we are going to load the torch base, so that we can decide how large to make the fire. Deselect everything and right click on the map. Choose to create a misc/misc_model, choose the storch/storch.md3. All you will get is a box. Well, because of a bug(?) q3r gives the path relative to the hard drive, not the pak0.pk3, bring up the Entity window by pressing N and under the key model, remove everything in the value, from the beginning to baseq3. (eg. mine was c:/program files/quake iii arena/baseq3/models/mapobjects/storch/storch.md3, so I changed it to models/mapobjects/storch/storch.md3). Now go back and look at the model... no change, your torch is still a box! Take it easy, save your work, and re-open your map. There, a nice skull torch model appears. move the torch to some wall where you want it. (by the way if you want your model to face a different direction you will have to change that in the Entity window by clicking on one of the direction buttons.) Now for the actual flaming. Make a brush on top of your torch, it should be as wide as the model 24 units quite thin 2 units and of some height 48 units. Place it in the center of the torch. Now assign it the common/nodraw shader. Select the main face (the one that you are supposed to see) and assign it the sfx/flame1 shader. Scale it and move it around so that the fire fits in the face, with some black space above it, Alt-drag the texture until it is aligned on the face. You can now take the map for a spin. The fire looks great from straight ahead, notice light it spreads! From the side tough, the flame just looks like a thin line. To fix this we are going to clone the flame to make a cross. Select the flame and press Ctrl C to copy it then Ctrl V to paste it. This will put a copy of the flame in exactly the same spot as the original. Now rotate the flame 90 degrees around the z axis. To avoid strange shadow effects, assign the new face the shader sfx/flame1side which dosn't emit any light. Remember that you only need the shaders on one side of the brush since you are using the nodraw shader on the 5 other faces it will basically make the fire a 2D sprite.

• Load a torch model (you don't need the torch model if you don't want it. Right click and choose misc/misc_model and choose something like storch/storch.md3.

• Now so that you can actually see to torch push N and for the key model under value delete everything through baseq3 so it reads models/mapobjects/storch/storch.md3. You can also change the direction your torch faces here, using the 90, 270... direction buttons.

• Save your map then close Radiant and open it up again and you should see your torch.

• Now make a 24 x 2 x 48 high brush directly on top of your torch. Apply the common/nodraw shader to the brush and for the face you are going to see apply the sfx/flame1 shader.

• Copy the brush you just made and paste it then rotate it 90 degrees around its Z axis and center it again so the 2 brushes form a + shape.

• Apply the sfx/flame1side shader to the side of newly pasted brush, and there you go, FIRE!