I'm aware of that, but if I can't get a nice looking material for the glass there's no need to bother with investing a ton of effort making an awesome model.
WiP in WiP, post your screenshots!
- Thread starter Arhurt
- Start date
Chronicius
L1: Registered
- Jun 11, 2014
- 9
- 7
A feeble attempt at a sane depiction truly, but the representation of the expanded horizon, i have decided, shall remain central to my work.
My belief, firm as it is, is that once finished and perfected, this shall become a beloved home to the brawls of the enlightened.
My belief, firm as it is, is that once finished and perfected, this shall become a beloved home to the brawls of the enlightened.
- Jul 22, 2009
- 1,874
- 1,257
ive heard vbulletin performance doesn't like large threads
tho it doesnt really seem to be a problem here
The Church of Mann, depict scenes of Saxton punching bears in the glass.
Like that stained glass texture of Freeman from the Half-Life tech demo all those years ago.
Why not look at the vmts for the existing glass textures? Or the glass on various models, like the medic's hazmat thing?
Yeah, Valve was showing off their shader system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ddJ1OKV63Q#t=236
It actually is using one of the glass textures right now as a placeholder. The problem to me seems to be the scale of it.. windows in a map are easy to make shiny because they're up close and probably have a env_cubemap nearby to reflect the world.
A giant glass dome? Based on my experimentation so far it's going to require some trickery and I was curious if anyone had tackled that problem before and had some advice. cp_biodome is an interesting pointer, but it doesn't appear the creator of that map tried to make the dome glossy. Which is fine, if that's how it needs to be I'll adapt but I wouldn't have known at all without asking.
I got a dumb idea and played around with it a bit tonight.
The glass might need some kind of specular effect or something so it doesn't just look like a grey tint.
Anyone ever done anything like this and got advice? Maybe put a phong reflection on the material? I'm not sure trying to put a specular map on it would be efficient or even look that good.
Don't bother with any glass, just focus on the framework, The implication of glass will be beter than the graphics oddities caused by actual glass.
Also, your idea isn't exactly new, valve are doing exactly the same thing on their moonbase map:
Lampenpam
aa
- Mar 23, 2013
- 1,013
- 347
Don't bother with any glass, just focus on the framework, The implication of glass will be beter than the graphics oddities caused by actual glass.
Also, your idea isn't exactly new, valve are doing exactly the same thing on their moonbase map:
But that's not a screenshot, so it might be not there
ellacourn
L1: Registered
- Jun 12, 2014
- 16
- 9
It kinda doesn't but I think the main point is that glass in a level has been done before ( if I remember correctly, Harvest ) and most times it's done, they don't use advanced shaders and textures to make it all pretty. They kinda keep it more simple ( which I guess, is for all items in TF2 ).
A whole map covered in a dome has not been done by an official map. Biodome had a dome that covered though, only one that comes to mind.
ellacourn
L1: Registered
- Jun 12, 2014
- 16
- 9
No, I meant a map with glass. A map with a dome is rather rare, I agree. I was just saying that glass in levels ( i.e. windows ) don't usually have complex textures and shaders to go with them ( at least, to my knowledge ).
Because I think scale matters.. with a pane of glass in a normal map it's not that big a deal. You get a shimmer or maybe a hint of the surrounding area due to a cubemap and it's good enough.
With an enormous dome though, you can't press your nose against it. Scale matters. I was thinking some kind of banded specular effect might look kind of nice, or maybe some kind of flare when you look at the sun. But I was having trouble getting it to work last night so I posted in the thread asking for people's experiences. It might just need more banging on it to get things looking nice.
Completely ignoring the glass and just building the structure will probably work too and I'll experiment with it as I work on it.. there's no reason I couldn't work on both and just pick whatever looks nicest.
ellacourn
L1: Registered
- Jun 12, 2014
- 16
- 9
From my personal experiences in general with the dreaded glass mats, I would just wait until you have the whole structure built. Messing around with glass is tricky and it's usually time consuming ( at least from my experience ). And yeah, I would use $envmap to create that effect ( or even, dare I say it, you could use $phong for a different but equally applicable effect, which I have no experience with ).
Also, sorry if I seem not very knowladgable in this stuff. It's been a couple years since I touched the Source Engine and I'm still getting into the swing of things again.
Last edited:
Well it's still pretty terrible, but I guess it means I have a proof of concept. Now I just have to make the textures and models not a steaming pile of poo.
It looks a bit better in game, because the reflections actually move. A solid color for the glass with low opacity and a very soft normal map seems to be the best bet, the one in the screenshot is a bit over exaggerated.
Phong ended up being a bust, it doesn't do what I thought it did. I went with a standard envmap reflection.
It looks a bit better in game, because the reflections actually move. A solid color for the glass with low opacity and a very soft normal map seems to be the best bet, the one in the screenshot is a bit over exaggerated.
Phong ended up being a bust, it doesn't do what I thought it did. I went with a standard envmap reflection.
TheBestUsername
L4: Comfortable Member
- Jun 25, 2013
- 151
- 96