Making point entities visible behind a refracted texture

[sehapanda]

I have created a scrolling, refracted texture. It works great, but the only problem is I can't see some point entities behind it in-game, which includes rain and point_spotlight. Is there anything that can be done in the .vmt or in Hammer to fix this problem? Or is this simply a limitation of the Source engine?

.vmt file

Code: Select all

"Refract"
{
   "$bluramount" "1"
   "$surfaceprop" "glass"
   "$refractamount" ".25"
   "$refracttint" "[1.5 1.5 1.5]"
   "$transluscent" "1"
   "$scale" "[1 1]"
   "$normalmap" "nightshift/rain_normal"
   "$dudvmap" "nightshift/rain_dudv"
   "$envmap" "env_cubemap"
   "$envmaptint" "[ .7 .7 .7]"
   "$REFRACTINTEXTURE" "nightshift/rain"

  "Proxies"
   {
 
      "TextureScroll"
      {
         "texturescrollvar" "$bumptransform"     
         "texturescrollrate" 1
         "texturescrollangle" -90
      }
 

   }

}

Screenshot:



See how the refracted glass blocks the point_spotlight?

Thanks.

[Dives]

Its a limitation in the engine. $translucent can't be rendered behind other $translucent.

[sehapanda]

Alright, thanks. It's a shame, it would have been a nice touch, but I guess it's not vital.

[kraid]

I once had a tree model behind a refract and when it used $translucent for the leafs it only rendered at certain angles, so it popped in and out depending on the players point of view.
Changing to $alphatest solved this issue, but i guess that's not possible in your case.

You also cannot have a model that has refract on a part of the texture and a regular texture on the rest. it simply will not render behind the refract.
Only way to bypass this is splitting into several models.