making an object invisible mid-game

Hi again everybody.

Basically, im working on making a stargate, like the one seen in the movie and the tv show. I have the portal and the teleporter working, and the water effect for the portal itself is working neatly, it all looks pretty sweet. But what i want to be able to do is have a button that makes the watery portal appear and dissapear sight.

(If you havent seen it, this is what it's supposed to look like:)



When it's off, that watery portal in the middle of the machine isnt visible, and you can see straight through to the other side. Below is my own version of the portal above:

[simg]http://www.geocities.com/greensinge/stargate.JPG [/simg]

Basically, the button will toggle the teleport function in the portal on or off, but when the teleport comes on, the water brush needs to appear, and when it goes off, the brush needs to disapear.

Seems like it should be simple enough, but i havent yet come across anything that makes things turn invisible yet. Any suggestions for me?

Cheers lads.

\\-Update-//

I've managed to cheat a little and get it working how i wanted... kind of... but i would still like this post to be answered in the way i asked, thanks.

But in the mean time, check out this other problem iv posted, it's related to the same map im making but its a different problem.

http://www.snarkpit.net/forums.php?forum=6&topic=6391&0

Cheers!

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...and he saw that it was GOOOOOD!

I am not sure of the exact nature of water but I am betting that water cannot be rendered invisible or it would lose its liquid values.

I am betting you will have to use a texture thats not water, but shimmers like it set to func_illusion, or the HL2 equivalent.

There are regular textures that have an "off" and "on" type and might be edited to this function you want but I am not at all sure you will get it using water.

Sorry.

You might get the "no draw" shimmer effect to work though.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

you could have a look at the env_toggletexture entity. i've not used it, so i don't know if it would be any good, but if it does anything like its name suggests, then you might be able to use it to toggle the texture of your water between visible and invisible. sort of like the old env_render.

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i eat paint

i cant find anything to make this work, so i have a new idea that i need suggestions for. Are there any textures similar to the nodraw or clip textures, where anything within a brush of that particular texture cannot be seen?

For example, if i was to make a large block brush with this "hide" texture that im quite possibly just dreaming up, and then i put another brush inside it with a normal texture, it would hide the brush inside it, but you could see right through the hide brush to the walls on the other side etc.

I hope somebody gets what i mean here....

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...and he saw that it was GOOOOOD!

There is an invisible texture called invisible. That would be a better choice, since something like nodraw doesn't render the face it's applied to.

The invisible texture lets nothing through (as far as I can remember).

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

greensinge said:
I hope somebody gets what i mean here....

i know what you mean, but no, there's no magic cloak.

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i eat paint

I beleive func_brushes can be turned on and off.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

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