Stained Glass in 3DSM5 Without Custom Textures

Is it possible? Of course it is, in fact, one could use any texture from the mpq and turn it into stained glass.

So lets get started:

Tools you need
· 3dsmax 5
· War 3 Art Tools (find them here)
· You will need WcIII image extractor (http://www.wc3campaigns.net/showthread.php?t=83092) or Warcraft 3 Viewer (http://www.wc3campaigns.net/showthread.php?t=82558) for getting the textures.

Starting
Ok, the first step is to put a plane, this one will be for the main texture, so also assign it the material with the texture you want to be converted into stained glass,

The material should be additive, from 50 to 80% of opacity, unshaded



In Warcraft 3 previewer:



Stained Glass effect

Create another plane with the same size and put it in the same place, only a bit forward, but this one with more segments, I used 4 for length and 4 for width, the numbers should be powers of 2(if not it will end having an stretched unwraping). Now you should give him a new material.

We will use the Temple of the Damned texture (why?, because it has what we need, but I think you could use the human tower texture as well)

This is the path of the Temple texture: Buildings\Undead\TempleoftheDamned\NewTempleoftheDamned.blp

Extract it, and use it as texture for the new plane's material

Use the Modulate 2x filter. Put it unshaded,

and crop this part of the texture(How? using this() button at the material editor, you should also check "Apply")



Unwrapping the new temple's plane

Select the Unwrap UVW modifier on the modifier list. Click on edit, a window like this should appear:



Now, mirror the edges from the horizontal 2nd half part and move them to the 1st half (This part is for giving it some kind of symmetry) do the same vertically then, you should repeat this process until having a single square, then you should scale the square to use all the texture area, at the end it should look like this:



Finishing

Ok, now copy the Temple's plane and put it in front of the Temple's plane, and create a new plane with only one segment (no need of more) and put it in front of the new one. This last plane will give the stained glass some kind of glow and also color. It should be fulll alpha with 50% opacity, unshaded

For this one you could use any texture, but I strongly recommend this one: Textures\Loading-BarFill.blp

Now, watch it at the Warcraft III previewer, and it should look like this:



It doesn't look that much like stained glass!! Well, its because this system isn't designed for making floating glasses, these glasses look extremely better when they are in buildings, mainly dark ones:



Enjoy creating Stained Glass!

Great tutorial... +Rep!

~Daelin

Good tutorial, well done..

Can't see a use for this as your example pic is a bit ugly. Texture flats aren't very pretty as a whole surface.

those look more like glass bricks than stained glass. I have never actualy seen a stained glass wich looks like that.

k improved the effect itself a bit

It still doesn't look much like stained glass..

hmm, what about now?

Much better, approved.