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Are these effects possible in Source?
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 Re: Are these effects possible in Source?
Posted by Grey Matter on Tue Aug 1st at 7:33am 2006

Hey guys,


Well, I've been experimenting with Source for the last few weeks and have a specific effect in mind, but have had a hard time pulling it off. I'm trying to render a brick walkway. It should be dark, but very shiney with a blue glow from a nearby spot light.


First, I want the normal/bump map to really impact the specular map. After adding reflections to my material and adding an alpha channel to my normal map, my surface ends up still looking like its covered in glass. (I am remembering to run the buildcubemaps command in the console.) So, I rendered out a brick in Maya to show the look I'm getting at:


Now these are quick sloppy versions, but hopefully you can see what I mean. The specularity is very impacted by the bump map, especially near the edge of the brick closest to the camera.

Secondly, this is also what I'm going for with the glow, although subtle, you can get the idea:


I've been trying to do this glow with HDR lighting but haven't had any sucess yet. I'm modding HL2 right now, so I'm not sure if this is something that has yet to be supported in HL2, but all the options are there, so I assume it is.

Does anyone have any suggestion on how to pull off either of these effects? ANY help at all would really be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.
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 Re: Are these effects possible in Source?
Posted by Dark_Kilauea on Tue Aug 1st at 6:14pm 2006

I heard a rumor once that you could add a reflection alpha map to your normal map. Perhapes this will help you get what you are wanting?


Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/



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 Re: Are these effects possible in Source?
Posted by Grey Matter on Tue Aug 1st at 8:08pm 2006

Yeah, I put a alpha channel into my normal map. That's all I can find at the Source Wiki, but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference in game. I can't decide if I'm just doing something wrong or trying to render something that's not possible in the Source engine without extra programming.<html><head><link rel="stylesheet" href="themes/standard.css" type="text/css"></head><body topmargin=2 leftmargin=2>



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 Re: Are these effects possible in Source?
Posted by midkay on Wed Aug 2nd at 4:09am 2006

First off, I have quite little experience with creating Source materials, but have you read this page? Might have some useful information if you haven't checked it yet.

That aside, I think the problem you may be having is the bit depth of your TGA file.

I created an alpha map for a decal I wanted to put into my map (spray paint). The alpha map wasn't recognized by vtex at the default bit depth of 24 bits in Photoshop. When I moved it up to 32 bits, vtex recognized+used it correctly.

Give this a try, whatever program you're using to save the TGA as. It's certainly not a limitation (masked reflections, that is). That will probably solve the problem.

Good luck!


-- midkay



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 Re: Are these effects possible in Source?
Posted by BlisTer on Wed Aug 2nd at 3:25pm 2006

the "covered in glass" effect you get is probably because you put in a monocolor alpha channel, or because your .vmf hasn't got the correct parameters.

your extra alpha channel should be black-grey-white, with the parts you want to be most reflective as the most white parts, and the parts that should not reflect: black. in the case of a brick there are no important reflective features, so i would just have a black background, speckled with grey to create a "dirt" feeling.

apart from your "$envmap" "env_cubemap" and "$bumpmap" "..." parameters, be sure to put

"$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1

in your .vmf

you can also tweak the effect with "$envmapcontrast"

you also have atleast one env_cubemap in your map right?




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