Cubemaps

[Meyer]

I'm still not entirely clear on how they work... I know what they do but I'm wondering... do you have to select the faces it works on or does it do that automatically... because with water you have to make a special cubemap and select the water surface to get it to work...

 

[DrDevin]

Cubemaps dont have to have faces selected to work. They will choose the right faces by themselves but if you notice peculiar lighting choose the faces manually and to fix the problem (this happens when you see light "stop" between 2 brushes but it should go on)

 

[Meyer]

ok thx... is there anyway to have textures look wet or something? cause I've made a map with rain but the ground looks normal... I was wondering if I could give them a sort of wet look.

 

[Exavior]

Here is how.

Create your texture with areas that look wet.

Create a normal map file that represents the texture of the surface
Create an alpha channel in your normal map texture that represents dry and wet areas on the texture. White areas will reflect more, dark areas will reflect less.

Save your normal map texture as a 32 bit TGA.

Now make the .vmt file for your texture look like this


"LightmappedGeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "path_to_texture/your_texture_here"
"$bumpmap" "path_to_texture/your_normal_map_here"
"$envmap" "env_cubemap"
"$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1
"$envmapcontrast" 1
"$envmapsaturation" 1.5
"$envmaptint" "[.3 .3 .3]"
"$surfaceprop" "what_ever_surface_type_fits"
}

The "$envmaptint" property will determine how reflective your wet areas will be. Larger numbers will reflect more.

 

[Xenethyl]

You can apply a bump map to your ground texture with a reflection key in the .vmt file. The reflections tend to make the textures look wet. There is a fairly good tutorial over at the Snarkpit on how to create bump maps (located here: http://www.snarkpit.com/editing.php?page=tutorials&game=HL2&id=122). If you decide to try this, make sure you have a cubemap present. Furthermore, if you don't have Photoshop, ATI has a standalone tool (located here: http://www.ati.com/developer/sdk/RADEONSDK/Html/Tools/NormalMapGenerator.zip) that will create the bump map for you with much less tweaking ability.

Good luck. If you have any more questions feel free to ask.

EDIT: Make sure you read over what Exavior has to say, he explains it very well for you.

 

[Meyer]

ok thx alot... gonna take me a while to get all this though...