: That's exactly right - in effect, you are creating an alpha channel. You can
: also make a glow map to make some textures, well, glow - useful for
: simulating light panels. Animations work well, too. The absolutely expert
: on all of this (it's certainly not me) is Scott Brown of Marathon
: Rubicon fame.
yes, an alpha channel, or alpha mask, or whatever it is called, i prefer to call it just a mask. It is just another texture/image file that is grayscale, black is visible, white is invisible (or vica verca mb, don't remember) not sure but i guess then gray and all the gray variants between black and white are semi transparent then.
