Reflective surfaces on entities

[evil^milk]

Well, I don't really think this has been discussed before so here goes...

How is the "glossy zombie" effect done? The look of the blood textures on the zombies was amazing and really added to the realism.

A similar effect was visible in last year's e3 videos, where Gordon had the USP and all the world around him was sort of reflected on the pistol's shiny metal, etc.

The chrome textures on the revolver look sweet, same effect...

[...]

 

[Lobster]

All the textures materials (whatever u wanna call them) can have shader infomation applied to them, so a glass texture is automaticly see through, a shiny chrome surface automaticly reflects a percentage of the enviroment map, etc etc

So its all down to the shaders u apply to the textures.

 

[Ownzed]

Cool. :smoking:

 

[SnowBall]

Well, I don't really think this has been discussed before so here goes...

How is the "glossy zombie" effect done? The look of the blood textures on the zombies was amazing and really added to the realism.

A similar effect was visible in last year's e3 videos, where Gordon had the USP and all the world around him was sort of reflected on the pistol's shiny metal, etc.

The chrome textures on the revolver look sweet, same effect...

[...]

As lobster said, its a shader. Something that was new to Direct X8 and 9. Basically just a texture that lays on top of annother texture to make it look shiny.

 

[Brian Damage]

Well, I'm pretty sure the shinyness on the headcrabs is done via a specularity map. which would be rendered with a shader, methinks. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[NeLi]

Oh...I never noticed any shinyness on any headcrabs? Where can I see that?

 

[Lobster]

Well I dunno much about it but as far as i picked up from the ATi pdf and some other things, the mapper places points everywhere in the map, which snapshot the map in all 6 directions creating a cube, and as u move around the map the shaders reflect the various mapped snapshots over the texture, which gives the effect of the game world reflecting on the surface, the reflection changes as u move closer to each point.

Its the same for all shiny surfaces, such as the walls on bugbait, the tiles will probbally have a normal map to define each individule tiles reflectivity, the bloody zombie, the OICW scope, the water, etc etc

 

[Brian Damage]

Oh...I never noticed any shinyness on any headcrabs? Where can I see that?

In some of the screenshots and videos they seem to have an oily sheen to them. Check out "Docks", I think that has the effect.

 

[Entr0py]

The shiny-ness on the Ant Lion's carapace looked quite good on that HL2 DX9.0 demonstration video.

 

[Sai]

i wonder how good the shading and reflecting can get, i mean can you grab a mirror with your manipulator and will it reflect everything around it?

 

[lans]

I want to see things reflect upon the magnum...extra shiny goodness.

 

[Darkknighttt]

ya me to it looks pretty sweet!

 

[Beserker]

So you don't have to "fake" the shiny-floor anymore? That shiny-floor is one nice trick.

 

[evil^milk]

Yeah, bring on the "DX9 shader revolution"

 

[Epsi]

Mirrors are very easy, heck, Q3 has mirrors (first thing you see on the first level) and I don't think a movable mirror would be too tricky either.

 

[Brian Damage]

Depends on how the mirrors are done. There's the old "Double-Room" trick, or there are a couple of ways that are closer to actual reflection...

 

[Pitbul]

if they can do the "camera" trick, im sure they can do moveable mirrors that reflect in real time.

 

[|Link|]

Will you be able to make a mirror in HL2? Im thinking of mapping a funhouse(hehehe)

 

[poseyjmac]

youll be able to make mirrors. but a funhouse would be lag city unless it was very small.

 

[phantomdesign]

...oops...wrong...topic....wrong forum....

 

[Cyanide]

About the fun house idea. You could do it, but it might not turn out exactly how you'd think. Depending on how the shader is written, each mirror may or may not reflect the reflection of the other mirrors around it. If it did, you could potentially run into a lot of lag, depending on what type of video card is in the system. A 9800pro or some other card that is DX9 capapble probably wouldn't have to much trouble with it. Something that's not DX9 capapble would probably choke on all the shader processing. DX8 is not nearly as good with shaders as DX9 is. Hence why you haven't seen many shaders until DX9 engines came on the scene.

 

[Darkknighttt]

dx9 shaders rule!