ReFlective Floor

Ok, im trying to get that shiney black floor look seen in Star Wars. I know before you had to build an upside down view of the map and make a sorta see though floor, so it appeared that the floor was reflecting the room.

Now with HL2 out there has to be a better way. Is there? I have tried water, but that makes a splish splash sound.. I tried glass, but then you get the little glass breaks when people shoot the floor. Im not sure how the reflective texture works.. it just shows up grey.

Any Ideas? Help? Advice? Please...

If you just want it to look wet, I believe there is something you have
to edit in some sort of file. (I'm sure fishy can fill in the
blanks) Hope this helps :biggrin:

HL2 uses cubemaps for reflective surfaces, basically it takes little pictures of the map and inverts them on the ground. Youll need to set up your texture to be reflective (some combine metals may already be setup for this). In the texture.vmt add these lines:

"$envmaptint" "[ .56 .56 .56 ]"
"$envmapcontrast" 1
"$envmapsaturation" 1

The numbers after $envmapint are (I think) RGB values for the intensity of the reflection. 1 1 1 will give you almost a mirror, 0 0 0 means no reflection. Contrast and saturation are presumably contrast and saturation.

In the map, make sure your floor is the right texture, and add env_cubemaps in the map. Each env_cubemap should be at player height (64 units or so from the ground), and you should place them anywhere the reflections change (say you have a corridor, one at each end and one in the middle). Then in-game, type buildcubemaps in the console, and it will generate the cubemaps.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

HL2 has some textures that are glossy.. I have seen them on walls in some maps. Perhaps this might give you what you want? I have no idea how to identify these texture within hammer but I do know some exist.

Perhaps, you do not have a machine big enough to notice these textures.

shrugs

Sorry I cannot be more specific.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Orpheus said:
HL2 has some textures that are glossy.. I have seen them on walls in some maps. Perhaps this might give you what you want? I have no idea how to identify these texture within hammer but I do know some exist.

Perhaps, you do not have a machine big enough to notice these textures.

shrugs

Sorry I cannot be more specific.

Oh My Machine is beefy.. it can handle it.

As for the suggested answer.. I am not sure how to do what your saying. If you can PM me a better idea on how to achive your answer, I can give it a try and see if it works.
I also looked at the tutorial for mirrors on "I WANNA MAP" web site, but I dont want a mirror so much as a really shiney floor.

how reflective a surface is depends on its envmap mask. this can either be embedded into the tga as an alpha channel before compiling the texture, or it can be a seperate file altogether. there are various commands that go in the vmt file, depending on what method you chose for the mask. i think the tint, contrast and saturation that wil50n mentioned only effect the 'shineyness' that the envmapmask generates.

moneyshot, what floor texture are you using/wanting to use? and what's the reflective texture you mentioned, the one you say is grey?

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i eat paint

To carry out wil5on's suggestion, first find a nice looking floor texture you want, and remember the name (including the folder it's in).

Next, get GCFscape or some other GCF-opening program, and open up the source materials GCF. Find the .VMT file for the texture you're after, and extract it somewhere.

Edit the VMT, and add those lines suggested above to it (or modify them if there's already something like them in there).

Rename it, e.g. "shiny_floor_tiles.vmt", and move it to a custom materials directory, e.g. for HL2DM half-life 2 deathmatch/hl2mp/materials/custom.

It should turn up when you next run Hammer, so place an env_cubemap entity about 64 units above it, and compile. BOSH!

fishy said:
how reflective a surface is depends on its envmap mask. this can either be embedded into the tga as an alpha channel before compiling the texture, or it can be a seperate file altogether. there are various commands that go in the vmt file, depending on what method you chose for the mask. i think the tint, contrast and saturation that wil50n mentioned only effect the 'shineyness' that the envmapmask generates.

moneyshot, what floor texture are you using/wanting to use? and what's the reflective texture you mentioned, the one you say is grey?

Fishy I want to glossy black marble look, as well as a glossy white marble look, seen in the Star Wars movies.

If you type in Reflective in the texture search tool, it comes up with like 6 big tiles from 10% to 80% reflective and then 6 small blocks the same way.
I have not been able to try Wil5on's idea yet.. and with Leps helping in that reguard I consider them both right, just dont know if they are right for this problem.. I was hoping for a more noobish simple way to achieve this look.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quote:</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>If you type in Reflective in the texture search tool, it comes up with like 6 big tiles from 10% to 80% reflective and then 6 small blocks the same way. </DIV></DIV>

ah, i didn't realise they were there, but they're actualy quite handy to know about. you've heard about alpha channels and alpha masks being embedded in textures to control reflection or transparency, well, you can also use a seperate greyscale texture instead. the reflectivity textures that you found are just the job for putting a shine on just about any texture that doesn't already have one. like if you extracted the vmt for a grass texture that you liked, you could add

"$envmap" "env_cubemap"

"$envmapmask" "dev/reflectivity_50"


and save it somewhere safe as shinygrass_50 or something. it would look the same as the original in hammer, but would have 50% reflectivity in game.


so to get your shiny floor, find a marble texture that you like. if it doesn't already reflect the world(you'll need to test it in game, to know for sure), extract the vmt and add the green stuff^. like i mentioned earlier, i think that wil50ns suggestion would only work, or affect the reflection, once the green stuff^ is in place.

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i eat paint

I've done this before, the $envmapmask key isnt neccessary. I think thats only needed if you plan on having varying reflectivity on the surface, it will use the mask as an alpha layer for the reflection.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

without the mask you would get an even 100% reflectivity. using the reflectivity textures that moneyshot found will give you greater control of how much reflection a surface will have.

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i eat paint

Ok So that added text above how or what do I do to use that.

Fishy how do I use the reflective textures then?

What if I just used the Black texture? and then where would I add that green stuff at?