EnvMap's for "shiny" floors.

[andylegate]

Okay, this one is a doosy.....still working on it.

With Blender, it was not really that hard (all though Bob had to show me how to do it, hehehehe, proving that I'm thick headed). However, if you look through my tutorial for it here, you'll find there are issues with doing it this way with Max and Cyan's plugin.

First, Cyan's plugin does not like it when you try to attach a dynamic env map to a non-waveset object. And considering they have it under New>Water>Enviorment Map
I can understand why. Not to mention when you look up there prp's in PrpShop, you'll see that they have fixed EnvMaps for their stuff.

This isn't too much of a problem as you can do it that way in Blender too, and even have Blender make the map for you.

My problem is trying to get Max to make a map for me

Still working on it. Any other info I find out I'll post here about it.

[andylegate]

Made some progress on this.....however not finished yet.

While messing around with the Material Editor, I had my material for the floor that I wanted to have a shiny envmap layer called up. It's a Plasma Standard material. I selected the 2nd plasma layer:



After selecting it, you can then change what kind of layer it is by clicking on the Plasma Layer button:



When you do, you have some very interesting choices you can pick from. What caught my eye was the Plasma types:



You can pick a Dynamic Env Map, and you don't have much to do after that:



If you instead pick Static Env Map, you get to make y our cubic env map. I thought this was pretty cool:



When I used either one, the results I got were there, the mapping, but the reflectivity was 100%.....felt like I was walking on a distorted mirror. I tried messing around with the map sizes, but didn't get anything I'd be happy with.

So still working on it.

Oh, BTW....if you pick a Dynamic Env layer, you'll have to assign the EnvMap component and assign it to your floor, BUT, if you do this, you'd better have a seperate collider, as any physics assigned to your floor will be disabled, heh. Fell right through every time.

[Paradox]

Actually, the layer you're looking for (if you want K'veer-style floors) is "Plasma Camera Layer". But it is not supported by PotS.

[Aloys]

Actually, the layer you're looking for (if you want K'veer-style floors) is "Plasma Camera Layer". But it is not supported by PotS.

I remember when Cyan first started talking about Plasma way back I started dreaming that we would be able to use 'real' real-time reflections shaders and have seas like Myst/Riven.. How disapointed I was.

[Jojon]

Hmm, "Plasma Camera Layer"... Does that name mean that this is a a sort of viewplane that can also be used as something like a mirror, at any angle, or a security camera monitor?

@Andy: No Max for me and I haven't read your post properly, but if your envmap layer is the top one and have 100% opacity, like in the first pic, I expect it *would* overwrite your base layer completely...
(On a tangent; I assume you intend to have one partly transparent "grime" layer on top of the envmap, as well?)

[andylegate]

@Jojon -

No, haven't tried and Grunge or Crack type layers yet. I've been very hard at working getting an Age that I was working on that the blend file for got formated off my hard drive, heh.
But now I've imported the actual Age into Max and am getting it going again. I linked in for the first time today......making an evil laugh. Using Cyan's Plugin, I'm going to put more goodies in it than I had originally planned.

However, Materials and Textures layers are important for me to learn in Max, that's for sure! The Age I'm talking about above has a shiny ring on the floor...heh.

Oh, yah, changing the value of Opacity of the material....make your object disappear from the 3D Scene window. I mean it will still show up in your Age, but not being able to see it in your window is......"annoying".

I think there's something in Max's setup that will change that.......but I've not found it yet.

Most people that I know, who know Max well, just seem to be too busy with RL right now to help, or simply are not posting on here. Of course a book on Max would help me some....but there won't be a thing about Plasma in it, hehehehe

[Agenotfound]

I remember when Cyan first started talking about Plasma way back I started dreaming that we would be able to use 'real' real-time reflections shaders and have seas like Myst/Riven.. How disapointed I was.

Ah... Mudpie where did you go ?

[rustee]

How come they've had mirrors in earlier engine versions and they don't have them in later versions?

[Branan]

How come they've had mirrors in earlier engine versions and they don't have them in later versions?

Probably they decided it was too much for the computers of the era to handle. Of course these days they could bump the minimum specs to something a bit more modern and add mirrors with no problems.

[Aloys]

That's too bad really; cause now we are stuck with it. If only they had kept the feature in the engine (but not used it in the game)...