How to tweak the heat emissive?

[Enceos]

There was introduced a new heat mechanic with KSP 1.0 which makes hot parts glow. And I have several questions about this mechanic:

1) Can we turn off this option for a particular part?

2) Is there a way to make only specific meshes/textures emit light when hot?

3) Can it be done without adding an emissive animation?

I noticed stock Circular intakes have an extra texture for heat in their folder and a new ModuleAnimateHeat in their config...

[Beale]

There was introduced a new heat mechanic with KSP 1.0 which makes hot parts glow. And I have several questions about this mechanic:

1) Can we turn off this option for a particular part?

2) Is there a way to make only specific meshes/textures emit light when hot?

3) Can it be done without adding an emissive animation?

I noticed stock Circular intakes have an extra texture for heat in their folder and a new ModuleAnimateHeat in their config...

1. AFAIK parts won't naturally glow unless you tell them to, unless you have the heat overlay turned on.

You need to add in a heat module, this requires an animation.

	
MODULE
{
      		name = ModuleAnimateHeat
     		ThermalAnim = RadiatorRadialHeat
}

For your other question:

2. Yes you can! You can use an emissive texture + animation to illuminate the part, there's a good tutorial here.

So for a glow effect like so, limited to just the nozzle section:

We take the surface texture:

And we mark off illumination (white = brightest, black = no illumination):

3. I don't believe you can. But, this is a good thing, you will want the artistic freedom to choose the colour and intensity of the heat effect! (For example, the radiators in Atomic-Age that glow a dull red).

Hope this helps.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Beale

[Enceos]

Thank you Beale, but for the first part you would be mistaken,

This is what happens to hot parts. All the overlay and gauges disabled.

I'm trying to prevent this somehow.

EDIT: Just got a reply for Starwaster, he says "There's a material bug in the temperature gauges code that causes it to not want to go away"

To prevent it we can disable the F10 gauges before the part heats up.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Enceos

[NecroBones]

I think the "black body radiation" glow is something that happens on all parts, and can't be disabled on a per-part basis. The engine-like heat-glow animation is something you do have to add per part, but that's not the same thing.

[NathanKell]

There are three ways to glow:

1. Emissive texture (and ModuleAnimateHeat for engines)

2. Black body radiation (all parts, barely perceptible)

3. Edge highlighting from the temperature gauge system (the glow people generally see--it's like an orange/red version of the editor highlight).