Quake 3 Shader Manual with FAKK2 Additions

A pretty detailed manual about Shaders.

Quake 3 Arena: Shader Manual with FAKK2 Additions

Written by: Brian Hook, Paul Jaquays, Christian Antkow, Kevin cloud, Adrian Carmack and John Carmack

FAKK2 Engine changes/additions by Pat Hook

1 Introduction

The graphic engine for Quake 3: Arena has taken a step forward by putting much more direct control over the surface qualities of textures into the hands of designers and artists. In writing this manual, we have tried to define the concepts and tools that are used to modify textures in a way that, it is hoped, will be graspable by users who already have basic knowledge of computer graphics but are not necessarily computer programmers.

Shaders are short scripts that define the properties of surfaces and volumes as they appear or function in the game world; or compatible editing tool. By convention, the shader file is named based from the contents of the file, i.e. the texture set contained in the file. Several specific script documents are also usually created to handle special cases such as, liquids, skies, fogs, sprites, models and special effects.