SFM tutorial - Aura effect

Tools that you will need...
- Blender
- After Effect / Photoshop
- Gimp
- VTFedit

Side note, Blaze model will be used for this tutorial but obviously this trick work for every model.

1- Load your model in Blender, once loaded, select your whole model then duplicate it ("CTRL + D" by default), hide the original body by clicking on the little "eye" on your object panel on the right (this will make the original model unselectable and so avoid some error from you during your work, you will not need the original body during the whole process), select the copied body then split your model per loose part (key "P" in edit mode by default).



 2- You might need to merge back some part of the copied body, for exemple in the case of Blaze, her fur wrists is made of several mesh part, merge them back BUT only the part from the same area (do not merge back the left wrists with the right wrists for example).
In the idea, each limb part have to be an unique object (left hand, righ hand, left leg, right leg...), you might need to do a more precise split in some case (split the left and righ leg) do it if needed (edit mode then "B" key to select the mesh to split, once selected, "P" and "split per selection").

3- Once each limb are correctly splitted, you will need to reassign their origine point to their geometry, to do so, select the body part then "SHIFT + CTRL + Alt + C" and select "Origin to Geometry".


4- Now you have to scale up each body part (in object mode, key "S" by default), the goal is to have the copied body part just a few centimeter bigger than the original body part, you can extand the right panel to help you.

As you can see in that case the hand has been scaled to +0.004 only, it's usualy enough.
Now I think you can guess what is the purpose of this...
Yes, the "copied body" will be the surface on which this aura effect will be applied !

5- Merge back together all the copied body part (DO NOT MERGE WITH THE ORIGINAL BODY), also delete the copied body part on which you do not want this effect (like the eyes).
Delete all the material used by the copied body part and add a new material (name it as you want, just keep in mind that your VMT will have to have the same name).


6- Finaly, export the copied body part as SMD, then recompile your original model by including the new SMD which contain the copied body part as "bodygroup".
Don't forget to add a "blank" code in the QC for your bodygroup, so you will be able to turn on/off the effect.

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Now the animated texture!

1- Create your animated texture to your liking, for the case of the "pyro overcharged" of Blaze, I have used After Effect with the free plugin "Saber"

Obviously, your texture have to use an alpha layer (so do not export it as a JPEG).
For the technical side, the perfect compromise between Vram consumption (in SFM), and quality of the texture is an animated texture resolution of 1024x1024 for a 6 sec duration with a frame rate of 30 FPS, obviously if you lower the FPS or duration, you will be able to increase the resolution and vice versa.

Once your texture is done, open GIMP and load all your animated texture, you can directly export your texture as VTF from there, Gimp might take some time to compile all the layer for the export (depending of your PC spec), once compiled Gimp will ask you choose some option for the VTF export.


Use the DXT5 format and don't forget to export as "Animation frames".
Here again, Gimp may take some time for the export, just let it work.
Congratz your texture is done but it's not over yet...

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The VMT code!

1- open your animated texture with VTFedit and generate a VMT, select as "base texture" AND "detail texture" your animated texture, as for the shader take "VertexlitGeneric"


And here the base code used...
In bold my personnal note to help you to understand the most important code.

"VertexlitGeneric"
{
                "$basetexture" "models/sunchild/Blaze_SunChild_U/Overcharged"
                "$detail" "models/sunchild/Blaze_SunChild_U/Overcharged"

                "$alphatest"        "1"     *This is your transparency code to see the model through the alpha layer*
                "$detailscale"        "1"
    "$detailblendfactor"    "2.5"
    "$detailblendmode"      "5"            *This will make the texture glow*


    "$phong" "1"
    "$PhongAlbedoTint"    "1"
    "$phongexponenttexture"    "models/apocmodels/SonicGenerations/exponent"
    "$phongexponent" "15"
    "$phongboost" "5"
    "$phongfresnelranges"    "[.6 2 15]"

    "$rimlight" "1"                         
    "$rimlightexponent" "8"                     
    "$rimlightboost" "0.2"                   
    "$checkzero" "0"



 "Proxies"
   {
      "AnimatedTexture"
      {
         "animatedtexturevar" "$detail"
         "animatedtextureframenumvar" "$detailframe"
         "animatedtextureframerate" "30"
      }
                                                                              *The whole "animated texture" part is obviously here to control the animation of your texture, use the same framerate as your texture*

                    "AnimatedTexture"
{
"animatedTextureVar" "$basetexture"
"animatedTextureFrameNumVar" "$frame"
"animatedTextureFrameRate" "30"
}
                     "TextureScroll"
      {
        "textureScrollVar"      "$basetexturetransform"
        "textureScrollRate"      "0.20"
        "textureScrollAngle"    "-90"
      }

  *The Whole TextureScroll" part is here to displace your texture over the model, change and play with these setting to your licking, the value "textureScrollRate" and "textureScrollAngle" have to be the same between both part, in some case it is possible that you may not need to scroll the texture, remove the code if needed* 

     "TextureScroll"
      {
        "textureScrollVar"      "$detailtexturetransform"
        "textureScrollRate"      "0.20"
        "textureScrollAngle"    "-90"
      }
    }

And it's finaly over o:
Little bonus, here the updated Blaze model with the overcharged effect (bodygroup)
www.mediafire.com/?gko0e4mr72l…


This little trick should open to you a lot of possibility, here a little test run made in less than 10 min by using a simple sphere model...



Quick and dirty but you can see the kind of thing that you can do o: