Mirrors

[Ghogiel]

I believe you can add an extra texture map that makes a surface reflective... but I can't say that I remember how. I'll look around and see if I can find a tutorial.

 

Regardless, I don't think it's very hard.

 

If you can find that tutorial I would be forever grateful

It might be my environment map tutorials which were in a section that got deleted.. if so not the same thing.

 

The thing you are after is something like the water shader which should do realtime true reflections.

 

 

Would this be possible before the release of the creation kit? sorry if I ask newb questions, I would have no idea how to make this but I would try for sure If I knew it was possible

maybe...? I guess there isn't a way to know very much without more research. And the CK might help.

[Falconsflight]

However, the performace will probably be horrible, because your PC will suddenly be trying to render twice the normal amount of polygons. There is a reason that devs don't usually put mirrors in games.

 

That is actually untrue. What you're talking about is something similar to the game Portal and Portal 2. Mirrors on the other hand only refract a camera angle and do not render polygons.

 

Oh that's awesome to know.

[cojaca2]

http://hammondslegacy.com/obmm/tutorial_reflective_metal.asp

 

That is not exactly a new-modder friendly tutorial, I had a bit of trouble figuring out what it meant. I took a screenshot of a reflective texture in NifSkope to show what it wants you to do.

 

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee361/fowlj4626/Untitled-2.jpg

 

Probably not as easy as you were hoping, but this seems to work out alright.

 

Do remember to darken your textures accordingly, since they will be reflecting light.

[Falconsflight]

http://hammondslegacy.com/obmm/tutorial_reflective_metal.asp

 

That is not exactly a new-modder friendly tutorial, I had a bit of trouble figuring out what it meant. I took a screenshot of a reflective texture in NifSkope to show what it wants you to do.

 

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee361/fowlj4626/Untitled-2.jpg

 

Probably not as easy as you were hoping, but this seems to work out alright.

 

Do remember to darken your textures accordingly, since they will be reflecting light.

 

wow I have no idea what this is lol, looks like I will have to learn how to use nifskope before examining this in greater detail, thanks a ton for this though, really appreciate it.

[Ghogiel]

http://hammondslegacy.com/obmm/tutorial_reflective_metal.asp

 

That is not exactly a new-modder friendly tutorial, I had a bit of trouble figuring out what it meant. I took a screenshot of a reflective texture in NifSkope to show what it wants you to do.

 

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee361/fowlj4626/Untitled-2.jpg

 

Probably not as easy as you were hoping, but this seems to work out alright.

 

Do remember to darken your textures accordingly, since they will be reflecting light.

 

wow I have no idea what this is lol, looks like I will have to learn how to use nifskope before examining this in greater detail, thanks a ton for this though, really appreciate it.

a) that is for oblivion and the shader and material set up is entirely different... none of that works in F3 or Skyrim.

b) That isn't even the right things to show. The only thing it is saying that does anything in game is the gloss is 30, and the emmissive is black< all other values will be ignored if you use textures, ie diffuse is controlled by the diffuse map and the ambient is controlled by the ambient light in the scene...Spec is over ridden by the specular map, or it'll work if it doesn't have one.

c) If you wanted to use a reflection map shader... it's not even showing how to set that up for oblivion. < you would name the material to EnvMap2 and set the apply mode to apply_hilight IIRC...

d) you won't get real reflections anyway. Just the cubemap (or sphere map in the case of Ob). you need to use something like water shader. I forget what it would be called in Ob, but I remember one material name is called 'Lava'... It's not what you want either.

Edited November 28, 2011 by Ghogiel

[Falconsflight]

http://hammondslegacy.com/obmm/tutorial_reflective_metal.asp

 

That is not exactly a new-modder friendly tutorial, I had a bit of trouble figuring out what it meant. I took a screenshot of a reflective texture in NifSkope to show what it wants you to do.

 

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee361/fowlj4626/Untitled-2.jpg

 

Probably not as easy as you were hoping, but this seems to work out alright.

 

Do remember to darken your textures accordingly, since they will be reflecting light.

 

wow I have no idea what this is lol, looks like I will have to learn how to use nifskope before examining this in greater detail, thanks a ton for this though, really appreciate it.

a) that is for oblivion and the shader and material set up is entirely different... none of that works in F3 or Skyrim.

b) That isn't even the right things to show. The only thing it is saying that does anything in game is the gloss is 30, and the emmissive is black< all other values will be ignored if you use textures, ie diffuse is controlled by the diffuse map and the ambient is controlled by the ambient light in the scene...Spec is over ridden by the specular map, or it'll work if it doesn't have one.

c) If you wanted to use a reflection map shader... it's not even showing how to set that up for oblivion. < you would name the material to EnvMap2 and set the apply mode to apply_hilight IIRC...

d) you won't get real reflections anyway. Just the cubemap (or sphere map in the case of Ob). you need to use something like water shader. I forget what it would be called in Ob, but I remember one material name is called 'Lava'... It's not what you want either.

 

Great back to square one I guess, I is sad.

[Thepal]

I haven't tried this in Fallout 3/NV, but in Oblivion the problem was that every object in the game could only use the one reflection map. So, you could set up a "mirror" that would reflect what was in a room, but every other mirror/object in the game would reflect the same scene. If Skyrim allows multiple reflection maps then pseudo-mirrors are possible (you can reflect the room, but not the player, though it would take a lot of work to get it right). What we really want to hope for though is that they gave us the ability to add real reflections to objects this time... but I doubt it.

[Falconsflight]

I haven't tried this in Fallout 3/NV, but in Oblivion the problem was that every object in the game could only use the one reflection map. So, you could set up a "mirror" that would reflect what was in a room, but every other mirror/object in the game would reflect the same scene. If Skyrim allows multiple reflection maps then pseudo-mirrors are possible (you can reflect the room, but not the player, though it would take a lot of work to get it right). What we really want to hope for though is that they gave us the ability to add real reflections to objects this time... but I doubt it.

 

Ya I had no idea that it was this complex, guess all we can do is hope.

[Ghogiel]

I haven't tried this in Fallout 3/NV, but in Oblivion the problem was that every object in the game could only use the one reflection map. So, you could set up a "mirror" that would reflect what was in a room, but every other mirror/object in the game would reflect the same scene. If Skyrim allows multiple reflection maps then pseudo-mirrors are possible (you can reflect the room, but not the player, though it would take a lot of work to get it right). What we really want to hope for though is that they gave us the ability to add real reflections to objects this time... but I doubt it.

Not quite the same thing. you'd need to do a light probe of the scene, from the objects perspective to get the right sort of map to fake it. Plus in Ob they are sphere mapped which basically makes it go wonky anyway, but in F3 and Skyrim it uses cube maps, which are entirely better, but it's still not quite the same thing.

 

I wish those tutorials I made still existed on the nexus... :(

 

here are some images from it, might just confuse you> it's how the cubemaps are composited and then mapped to the surface of the mesh in F3..

 

 

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/209926-1259326989.jpg

 

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/209926-1259327039.jpg

 

[Falconsflight]

I haven't tried this in Fallout 3/NV, but in Oblivion the problem was that every object in the game could only use the one reflection map. So, you could set up a "mirror" that would reflect what was in a room, but every other mirror/object in the game would reflect the same scene. If Skyrim allows multiple reflection maps then pseudo-mirrors are possible (you can reflect the room, but not the player, though it would take a lot of work to get it right). What we really want to hope for though is that they gave us the ability to add real reflections to objects this time... but I doubt it.

Not quite the same thing. you'd need to do a light probe of the scene, from the objects perspective to get the right sort of map to fake it. Plus in Ob they are sphere mapped which basically makes it go wonky anyway, but in F3 and Skyrim it uses cube maps, which are entirely better, but it's still not quite the same thing.

 

I wish those tutorials I made still existed on the nexus... :(

 

here are some images from it, might just confuse you> it's how the cubemaps are composited and then mapped to the surface of the mesh in F3..

 

 

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/209926-1259326989.jpg

 

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/209926-1259327039.jpg

 

 

Ya I wish I understood this, I mean I can see the way it is mapped I guess but have no clue what this changes.