How to Create Working Portal Cameras?

I just been trying to do a little mapping for ioquake with GTKRadiant. I was trying to make a working portal camera.

  1. I created a brush with portal surface texture.
  2. I created a misc_portal_surface near it and pointed it at cam1: target cam1.
  3. I created a misc_portal_camera and named it cam1 and pointed it at view1: targetname cam2, target view1.
    4 I created a target_position entity and put it in the direction of the view I wanted from cam1 and named it view1: targetname view1.

The connection lines between the three entities were present as expected.

All I get on the portal_surface brush texture is a mirror display.

I searched for posts on this, and it seems like it’s been a problem for a long time. Some of the tutorials people mention are broken links now. other just say to do what I did.

So is GTK Radiant broken with regard to portal camera’s or am I just missing something?

you want to do something like Prey ?

I want to project the image from the camera on to a portal surface.

Just to make sure everything works fine with ioquake3 and Gtk Radiant 1.6, I quickly compiled the q3dm7 sample map. It works for me without problems. So I assume something is wrong with your misc_portal_camera/misc_portal surface.
Probably try to first compile q3dm7 sample map for yourself, to check that your map compiler (q3map2) and Radiant 1.6 (!) works correct. If the portal camera on q3dm7 sample map compiles and works fine, than I would inspect your own misc_portal_surface/misc_portal_camera combo. Probably your shader is wrong, or, more often, they are linked in the wrong order. Best to compare your own construction, with the camera from q3dm7 sample map (q3dm7 sample map should be on your HDD already, it comes with Radiant 1.6 iirc).
I can’t see a camera problem caused by ioquake3.

I’m fairly sure it’s just a matter of having the proper shader and texture. Few people seem to be using them so there is virtually zero recent discussion of this anywhere.

I’m compliling the map now.

The map leaked…

I seem to be having trouble at every turn lately.

Yeah, sometimes even Fortuna had to sleep for a while! Don’t give up!

Where in the map the the camera and connected portal surface? maybe I can just look at them.

You mean q3dm7 sample map? It should be inside your baseq3/maps folder in your Quake 3 Directory. Mine is called Quake III Arena/baseq3/maps/q3dm7sample.map. Depends on what directory you choose while installing Radiant.
Radiant is referencing this directory, make sure Radiant is correctly set up. Here is the Radiant (I think with the 3 sample maps): http://icculus.org/gtkradiant/documentation.html.
and here is something you probably also already know, a tutorial about portals: https://de.ws.q3df.org/level_design/portal_camera/

Yeah, that’s one of the few that I found that make it sound easy.

Anyway I just found the portal with the camera projecting in the q3dm7 map. I’ll have a look at it in radiant now.

Just a hint: In Radiant, press Alt+1 to hide the world, so you can inspect the entities with ease! And eventually Alt+0 to hide the light entities, they aren’t needed for portals.

I was using other textures such as mirror and common portal so I tried the exact one on that page the sfx/portal_sfx and I still just get a mirror image in the portal.

The portal in q3dm7 is part of a larger model. I’ll have to figure out how to ungroup the model so I can look at the texture on the portal there.

Although the the original pre-compiled q3dm7 has the working effect I want. So it’s a matter of figuring out where I am differing from that.

I even put the portal model from q3dm7 in my little map and I just get a mirror effect.

It’s got to be a setting or something somewhere in Radiant, because all my textures and setting are correct as far as I can tell.

I’d upload my map for you but the site refuses anything but image files apparently.


Hmm, even though Q3DM7sample.map leaked, it still compiled and ran. And in that map the portal camera was working. Now to delve in to that map file more I guess.


I got it. What a hassle. It reminds me of learning how to configure Sys V.Init.

All other surfaces except for the portal surface must be set to hint, or some other culled texture. then the camera/mirror works.