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Ever wonder how to make a mirror in Half-Life? Ever wanted to have a mansion with a nice reflective floor? Read this to find out!

Ok, well that was a cheesy introduction, but hey, got the attention smiley. Anyways, I made this tutorial to explain one of the methods of creating a mirror image reflective surface. I'll mention right now, *The player will not appear in the reflection*. I hope this helps any of you who have been stumped on this before.

Step 1: Create a full room, part of a map, or whatever, with complete walls, ceiling and a floor.



Step 2: Make sure that the floor height is *1* unit tall. Extend the wall height down by 1 unit to make sure that the floor is covered by all walls.



Step 3: Select every other brush, entity and whatnot *except* the floor.



Step 4: Copy the entire selection and hit CTRL+M. Enter 180 in the X value and hit OK. Next hit CTRL+i *or* CTRL+l to mirror the image vertically *or* horizontally. Only one will be need and you will understand which one because it should be the identical shape, just flipped.



Step 5: Move the flipped selection under the original. Make sure everything is lined up perfectly and make sure the walls from the original are touching the walls from the flipped selection.



Step 6: Select the floor and create it as a func_wall. Set the Render Mode to Texture and then FX Amount to whichever you prefer. Set to 100 for a nice appearance for now.



Now, you may compile, add in other prefabs, lights, etc.

Here is the final product:



I hope you enjoy this, and I really hope it helps. Good luck to anyone doing reflective surfaces. The ONLY problem I notice is that the player is not reflected and the faces are doubled. So, take caution and use wisely.

Have a great time =)


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Discussion
0 starsPosted by half-dude on Thu Jan 8th 2004 at 7:31am

Another good "two door open" method would be to make both doors one by grouping them and making both of them the same func_door entity. that would prevent the door reflection from closing and the other not due to the player/monster blocking it But this would only work with a swinging door. But other then all that its a good tit. smiley
0 starsPosted by 7dk2h4md720ih on Wed Jan 7th 2004 at 6:06pm

Lovely. The only thing is that the room is a little complex and beginners may have trouble with the hammer screenshots. My, it is beautiful though.. smiley
0 starsPosted by DudeTor on Wed Jan 7th 2004 at 4:37pm

great tut Perin =)
0 starsPosted by Mr.Ben on Wed Jan 7th 2004 at 3:26pm

If you name the doors the same thing and have a trigger multiple infront of them targetting the door then it'll open both of them. A problem could come though from blocking the door when it closes and simply wacking up the damage so it crushes the player wouldn't be a good idea witha simply wooden door smiley I guess you could just make it not close though. Mmm.

Oh yeah, nice tut.
0 starsPosted by Gollum on Wed Jan 7th 2004 at 2:09pm

An additional problem is that, in singleplayer, monsters will not be reflected. There is a way to solve this, described in the VERC article, though it's not quite perfect (the monsters' left/right won't match with their reflection). If you really need perfect monster reflections, there's always Spirit of Half-Life.
0 starsPosted by Forceflow on Wed Jan 7th 2004 at 1:13pm

This was on VERC a while ago, but the tut there wasn't really good. I love this one. Clean, simple, and the effect is awesome.
0 starsPosted by DeathMedic3rd on Wed Jan 7th 2004 at 12:12pm

nice, i've done reflections before. only thing i'd like to know
is it possible to get doors to mover in the "reflection" with scripts or not?
0 starsPosted by Vash on Wed Jan 7th 2004 at 3:42am

Tis not possible in the HL engine skeletor. Good tutorial nontheless.
0 starsPosted by Skeletor on Wed Jan 7th 2004 at 2:02am

I never thought about doing that. Would be cool though if the player could see themself.
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