Judith on 9/2/2008 at 11:12
I added some basic formatting, to make it more legible and changed the link to a demo, so now you can install and uninstall it automatically.
I'd also be grateful If some native english speaker could help me with stylistics of this tutorial, to make the reading more fluent (if possible :p).
Ziemanskye on 9/2/2008 at 11:36
I haven't read all that (on the grounds of being long and scary, and I've reinstalling to procrastinate against), but I did want to ask: does this "reflect" properly wherever it's applied? (like on ceilings it'll show the floor, walls the opposite and so on when looked straight at)
Dumb question, perhaps, but I thought that might be the reason it's not setup quite the same way as the UDN example - we have to force it to be in Environment Space rather than just toggling a value and letting it work it out for itself behind the scenes :p
Also, if it doesn't reflect quite right, it might give an idea on how/where you need to move things around to fix it.
Flux on 9/2/2008 at 12:06
If you want ceiling to reflect floor and vice versa, you'll need two cube maps separate for each. Cube maps are used mostly for water reflection, not to have a shiny-reflecting marble floors all over the level.
Thanks for the tutorial Judith:thumb:
Did you try to some grey or generic metallic texture as cube map, not to reflect the environment but to give some extra-shiny look? It might work good on some metal surfaces.
So the whole workflow is like in unreal engine 2. (apart from the screenshot taking) I wonder if we can use the projectors from ue2. That would help to get not just some cool effects but also help to solve many shadows problems in a cheap way.
Judith on 9/2/2008 at 12:16
Quote Posted by Ziemanskye
I haven't read all that (on the grounds of being long and scary, and I've reinstalling to procrastinate against), but I did want to ask: does this "reflect" properly wherever it's applied? (like on ceilings it'll show the floor, walls the opposite and so on when looked straight at)
Dumb question, perhaps, but I thought that might be the reason it's not setup quite the same way as the UDN example - we have to force it to be in Environment Space rather than just toggling a value and letting it work it out for itself behind the scenes :p
Also, if it doesn't reflect quite right, it might give an idea on how/where you need to move things around to fix it.
Yes, the floor can reflect the items on a ceiling if you want, I just fear that you might have a problem with e.g. a floor in a long corridor - you probably can't make a screenshot that big in your viewport? You can make some "generic" cube then and decrease the reflection amount so the player doesn't see the details.
There's still a lot of things to experiment with here. I just checked whether you can save cubemaps with rectangular textures - you can! :) 256x128, 512x256 - no problem, just have to test it ingame and see the results.
Generally I believe that such reflection cubemap looks well only on single objects - water puddle, window, marble column, etc.
For walls and bigger surfaces I'd use "cubemapping as a specular" i.e. make a specular definition in cubemap and then define which part of a diffuse texture should be reflective or not and tho what extent. You can find an example of this technique in devs CIV textures - the reflective floor. Yet this is very crude example. You can do much more than that. This method will be the subject of my next tutorial and you'll be able to see it in next demo. :)
Judith on 9/2/2008 at 14:28
Quote Posted by Ziemanskye
Not what I was asking: Flux got it - do we need one cubemap for the room so any surface in that room uses a "reflection" Envmap or do we need different ones depending on the alignment of the surface?
That's an interesting question. It's mostly your choice, a separate cubemap for every item or surface would give you more precise results, but why not to place your camera in the middle of the room and take the shots? If the reflection amount isn't set to 10, then I think that most players won't notice the difference anyway.
massimilianogoi on 9/2/2008 at 14:33
Hmm.... :confused: it doesn't work with me...
It crashes when loading.... I'm wondering why...
And all the others FM works currectly..
Judith on 9/2/2008 at 20:35
Which version do you have: 30 mb or 36 mb? Try to download the latest version and install it with GarrettLoader, as usual.
massimilianogoi on 12/2/2008 at 13:29
Quote Posted by Judith
Which version do you have: 30 mb or 36 mb? Try to download the latest version and install it with GarrettLoader, as usual.
30 Mb. What's the newer version?
