• ArtReference Q4Shaders AnimatedStrips

Animated strips are materials that scroll in steps across an image simulated animation. Below are example shaders and images from a fire animated shader used in Quake 4.

Shader

gfx/effects/fire/flame1
{
        qer_editorimage gfx/effects/fire/flame_strip.tga
        noSelfShadow
        translucent
        noShadows
        twosided
        {
                blend add
                map gfx/effects/fire/flame_strip.tga
                scale 1 / 32 , 1
                scroll table32[ time * .6 ] , 0
                clamp
                vertexColor 
        }
}

The important lines to notice are:

• scale 1 / 32 , 1 This adjusts the scale of the image to only show 1/32th of its width. The image has exactly 32 parts. The height stays at the default of 1.

• scroll table32[ time * .6 ] , 0

  This scrolls the image horizontally using a table named table32:

table table32 
{ 
        snap
        {
                0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
                16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 ,24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 
        }
}

• The table used must match exactly the scale dimensions to animate correctly. If you are using an image with 16 parts, you need a scale of 1/16 and a table that works in 16 steps.

Images

The animated fire image has 32 parts to it, each 128 pixels wide. This image has been resized to fit.

Here is a close-up of a part of the image.