Q3Radiant Shader Manual

Revision #12

By Paul Jaquays and Brian Hook

(with additional material by John Carmack, Christian Antkow, Kevin Cloud, & Adrian Carmack)

QERadiant.com thanks John Hutton for re-formating this manual into a more web friendly version

1 Preface: Making Your Own Shaders
2 Introduction

2.1 What is a Shader?

2.2 Shader Name & File Conventions

2.3 Shader Types

2.4 Key Concepts

3 General Shader Keywords

3.1 skyParms <farbox> <cloudheight> <nearbox>

3.2 cull <side>

3.3 deformVertexes

3.4 fogparms <red value> <green value> <bluevalue> <distance to Opaque>

4 Q3MAP Specific Shader Keywords

4.1 tessSize <amount>

4.2 q3map_backshader <shadername>

4.3 q3map_globaltexture

4.4 q3map_sun <red> <green> <blue> <intensity> <degrees> <elevation>

4.5 q3map_surfaceLight <light value>

4.6 q3map_lightimage <texturepath/texturename>

4.7 q3map_lightsubdivide <value>

4.8 surfaceparm <parm>

5 Editor specific shader instructions

5.1 qer_editorimage <texture path/texturename>

5.2 qer_nocarve

5.3 qer_trans <value>

6 Stage Specific Keywords

6.1 Texture map specification

6.2 Blend Functions

6.3 rgbGen <func>

6.4 AlphaGen <func>

6.5 tcGen <coordinate source>

6.6 tcMod <func> <…>

6.7 depthFunc <func>

6.8 depthWrite

6.9 Detail

6.10 alphaFunc <func>

7 Notes on Alpha Channels
8 Troubleshooting Shaders
9 Creating New Textures

9.1 Tools Needed

9.2 Setting up Files

9.3 Rules and Guidelines

9.4 Making the .pk3 File

Appendix A: targetShaderName and targetNewShaderName

Q3Radiant Shader Manual

Revision #12

Table of Contents