Isolated Fog
Hello there!
I'm new to the forums, drawn here by a problem of fogging my level correctly. While fogging might not be the correct term, I just wouldn't know any other way of calling it.
I know that you can fog your levels with an env_fogcontroller or by calling different environments on the globals instance. But all of those modes assume that you are INSIDE the fog.
What I am trying to create is a sorta fog you can see from the 'outside'. Imagine climbing a foggy mountain in early morning. While climbing up, you're inside the fog (and that's where the env_fogcontroller comes handy), but once you reach the top, you're ABOVE all of that fog. You can still see it, but you're no longer affected by it. How would one go ahead to create such a thing?
On a more detailed note: I'm trying to 'fog' a part of my map where the player can look, but is not able to go, with orange fog (kind of like they used to do it in the Portal 1 game). I attached a few screenshots so you can see what I'm talking about. I would like the ends of the props to be consumed by the fog, giving it a sorta 'endless pit' feeling.
http://i.imgur.com/gbbJXgA.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/yZTI90T.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/m8RfPEJ.jpg
env_fogcontroller does not seem to work, for obvious reasons, I don't want the player to see the fog in any other direction than the bottom, plus I don't want the itensity of the fog to change (i.e. if the player would jump, he'd increasy his height, thus changing the intensity of the fog you can see while looking down - jumping just wouldn't change a fog volume which doesn't affect you)
So I hope I made my point clear, looking forward to any helping tips you guys might throw at me!
Hi welcome to the forums. To make fog that the player is not "in" it, you need to set the fog start value in the env_fogcontroller to an appropriate distance. The orange thing from Portal 1 is not fog, it's a texture. Look for "light" in the browser and select either red or orange. I'm not sure. You can change the values of the fog controller with Inputs and outputs like SetFogStartValue or something like that.
I think the problem is that you want to make clouds, not really fog the way the Source engine thinks about it.
If I wanted to implement that, I'd probably use two fog_volumes with different env_fog_controllers (one above, one below), with a cloudy texture on one side of a nodraw-brush at the boundary.
what you see in those images is a texture with the fading allready applied to it, with an orange/red light at the bottom to color the models
what you can do it make a texture that is "cloudy" so that it looks hazy... that would work very well with things in a distance... a cloudy particle effect would work better for close up encounters
here's a tutorial on how to create custom particle effects
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70GhO6z5aKM
I'm not sure if this would be helpful or not, but if you want the area beneath those panels to look a little foggy you could add a env_fogcontroller, and make the lighted texture under them tools/black. This generally creates the illusion well enough for me in my maps.
If you want that area specifically, and only that area to have the fog I'm not quite sure that's possible in the source engine though 
Here's my personal tip, which, I think, would fit quite well to your situation:
Use an env_smokestack and play a bit around with the properties - example picture appended.
The left picture has the properties:
- spread at base: 40
- Speed: 20
- Twist: 20
- roll speed: 100
- Translucancy: 20
The second picture has:
- Speed: 10
- Length of smoke trail: 50
- Translucancy: 50
(All else default values)
You can also change the color of the smoke.
A map pack coming soon. - click for more information
