Level Design Glass, GLASS!! GL-***

[gunslingor]

I'm trying to make reflective glass surfaces, each surface acting like a plain of glass. how do i do it?

 

[ro_sauce]

real-time reflections? like a mirror?

 

[gunslingor]

it doesnt have to reflect objects, just light. should go from pretty much all white to transpartent and dusty depending on angle.

 

[ro_sauce]

could a cubemap work for what you are trying to do?

i'm still not exactly sure what you want.....

 

[gunslingor]

 

[ro_sauce]

ah ok, and you want to know how to make a glass texture for the glass bells?

i'm sure a cubemap would work just fine, it would "reflect" the room that the fixture is in.

first, figure out what you want to use as a base texture, i'm gonna be using stuff from the kf texture packages (i can explain how to make your own see-through texture using paint.net (free & easy) if need be)

texture browser->file->new
package=mylevel
group=glass
name=lampfixtureglass
class:raw material
material class=classengineshader

what a shader does is combine and layer multiple texture atop of eacch other, and how they affect eachother.

i'm gonna only need two textures for the glass, a translucent texture, and a cubemap.
you can do more as you start messing with combining textures.

in the lampfixtureglasstexture's(the shader you just made) properties click on the diffuse menu.
in your texture browser, go to killingfloorstatics->statics->puddlealpha
in theyour texture's properties, in the diffure menu, click use and it will add in the puddlealpha texture.
in the texture browser->killingfloorlabtextures->statics->glassreflection_env
shader properties->specular->use
so now you just put the cubemap (glassreflection_env) on top of the puddlealpha. you can read how to do those in murphy's link.

but it's not see-thru yet.

go down to outblending and cycle to ob_modulate, and i like how that looks (use it as the skin for the lampglass object)

you can do more, and probably better ones, by trying different outputblendings, annd using different textures in each layer.

i'm not exactly sure about all this, but it's how i think it works from just messing with it.

 

[Murphy]

Here is how you make a "reflective" material. You can combine this with your glass-texture either with a Combiner or a Shader.
If you need help with that, post again. It should be fairly self-explanatory from here though.

EDIT: ro_sauce ninja'd me. Just wait for his tutorial.

 

[gunslingor]

alright!! cube map i start studying this i do i do i do.. tiered as hell, working 14 h days, night peeples o webworld.

 

[Fel]

alright!! cube map i start studying this i do i do i do.. tiered as hell, working 14 h days, night peeples o webworld.

Its pretty simple. FYI do get a good cubemap you should take 6 screen shots of the lvl

Left, Right, Front, Back, Top, Bottom (Bottom I use a generic black tex)

Another way is to use a Camera and display the camera's Img as a reflection

 

[Murphy]

Another way is to use a Camera and display the camera's Img as a reflection

Overkill, imo, and afaik it doesn't work online.

 

[ro_sauce]

lol, that cameratexture client stuff is weird sometimes, gotta keep that to small areas.

 

[Fel]

Overkill, imo, and afaik it doesn't work online.

ummmm look at obsidian and say that... works just fine


Lol do some research 1st Murphy. Obsidian has about 15 working cameras and 2 camera reflections (fluid surface reflections). and guess what...... THEY WORK ONLINE!!!

( i wouldnt be this harsh if i wasnt just attacked)

I love how whenever i post something people ALWAYS try and jump on me to find something wrong with what i say. Go Ahead... Refute this But they DO work online and they look beautiful especaly when you see the zombie reflections in the water. Is This overkill? no its EPIC

Maybe your definition of overkill is just being lazy

 

[Murphy]

I did not mean to attack you, nor do I scan anyone's posts for mistakes. No need for angry PMs.

ummmm look at obsidian and say that... works just fine


Lol do some research 1st Murphy.

I had camera-textures on round, vertical fluid surfaces as portals in a map of mine for UT2003 or UT2004. Don't remember. But I do remember them not working online. Either this knowledge is just outdated and it works now or it was just a screw-up in my setup back then.

Either way, my mistake. I'm sorry.

Maybe your definition of overkill is just being lazy

That's probably it.

 

[Benjamin]

( i wouldnt be this harsh if i wasnt just attacked)

Where exactly were you being attacked?

 

[YoYoBatty]

I like Fel's idea on his camera cubemap... I must look more deaply into this

 

[ro_sauce]

its ok, they dont show up very clearly though, and you cant use it on a large surface cause it tiles all funky.

 

[gunslingor]

well, i still don't think either is what I want. I dont want reflections of objects in a room, I want reflection of light per say. Here, let me find a real picture:
[url]http://www.sapphireblue.com/dangerousart/shards.jpg[/URL]


Here is the real world (pun intended) narrative of how it should work. As the player stands say 100 feet away and walks past the lamp and the lamp should kind of flash at them. You know, because you can shine light in peoples eyes with a shinning piece of glass at a certain angle. It seems so easy in Maya, just a simple blin metal material with transparancy or something. How the f do i make glass!!

or, if this isn't possible, another suggested approach. And fyi, the entire mesh is pretty much glass....

question, opacity maps. can you make it a range of opacity or is it just completely opaque/transparent for each pixel?

 

[ro_sauce]

in you picture editing software, when you color the alpha channel that decides how transparent something will be:
white=no transparency
black=complete transparent
shades of gray=translucency

then save it as a .DDS file format, DXT1=no alpha, DXT3=specific alpha(b&w alpha channel), DXT5 = blended alpha channel

so basically what you might want to do is alphachannel the edges of the glass shards, then put it as diffuse, then make a flared cubemap (you dont have to take 6 prespective pics, you can just use a corona or something bright for them all and make see which camera space looks best in the env texture) then make the it specific to the masked part of the diffuse texture.
or something like that, i'm kinda trying to do this from memory.

someone please correct the stuff that might be wrong, this is just what i figured out from messing with stuff, like always, so its umm, edumacated guesses.


hey one thing i came across, if i make an alpha chaannel for a texture, export dxt3/5, then in ued if i set alphatexture=false, the texture has a gradual shading, like far away it is black/dark, then when you get closer it shows the texture. what is this called? and why does it happen?

 

[ro_sauce]

hey what you could do is just make a few corona lights that use a "glint" texture of some sort, and just put them kinda behind the meshes where you want them to gleam/notgleam, statics cull corona's, so when someone moves just right to be able to view the semi-hidden corona-lights then it will gleam.

like this, but you can do it better i'm sure, i'm just trying to show what i mean:
YouTube - cvt KillingFloor 2011 02 24 15 07 10 50

 

[J.D.*]

For a gleam like glass effect you could try a simple texture with an alpha channel for opacity, create a highly contrasted, glossy like Specular map and if you want a custom Corona to use for the Cubemap. You can play around with the size of your specular highlights and the size/brightness of the corona to get something that your looking for.

Spoiler!

Of course this would look more like what you wanted when applied to your uvs and model.

Heres the map if you wish to view the material setup.

http://www.gamefront.com/files/20040130/GlassExample.rar