I have a placeable wall textured to look like dark marble. I want to make is glossy like it is polished or wet.
I have played with the glow map but that just makes it glow ... much as I might have expected.
Does anyone know any other tricks for doing this?
PJ
In Gmax, I'd set the specular strength to 100%, white, and about 50 glossiness maybe, and then use the specular map (the alpha channel of the normal map) to vary the strength.
Some sort of glistening special effect might be a way to enhance the look. Like faint gleams of light being spawned as a particle effect across the mesh.
Thank you both for your responses, unfortunately I did not understand what either of you said ...
I am adjusting the texture on a BCK wall so I'm not opening it in gmax. I Understand how to make normal map and I think I am doing the specular map right. I did not know there was Glossiness I could play with, that would help if I understood that. Google time me thinks 
I though to use a vfx, maybe the glass one but there are going to be so may of these walls placed I am not sure that is a good way forward?
Thanks again gents your responses are much appreciated. I think now I will go away and research, perhaps come back with some more specific questions soon.
PJ
Send the wall to me, and I'll pour some water on it.
Oh, a little clarification: if the MDB itself is not set to have any specularity, then nothing you do to a specular map will have any effect. If you send it, I'll set the specular properties properly, and also set up the specular map in a way that appropriately enhances the wet look (rather than having a plain perfect mirror-like all-over shiny look).
I hear the wet look is really in this season.
I guess I didn't explain that very well. A number of the effects are built to emit particles randomly from the target mesh. An example would be some of the weapon visual effects. You can create a particle effect file (pfx) to display a graphical image for some interval of time (such as a small star cross), and then create a particle mesh effect to emit those pfx's from random mesh faces (such as from an invisible plane). It's probably overkill though. I think Tchos' model and texture changes should do the trick, if the lighting is right. You wouldn't get any sparkly flashes though.
The problem with the emission VFX approach is that walls would have to be non-static to apply an SEF to them. Non-static walls wouldn't block line of sight, nor would they block the camera.
One VFX option might be to create billboards like those used for the energy barriers, and align them manually as separate placeable effects. You can't scale billboards though, so that would limit the ability to scale the wall sections. Billboards also can't be rotated, so you'd have to have lots of separate SEFs for each wall alignment you intended to use.
The specularity option sounds like the most promising.
I was thinking the other day that some of the flowing water effects might look better with multiple layers to give it some depth. Maybe a lower non-transparent layer with reflectivity turned on and upper transparent layer(s), all having the same (or similar) UV scroll settings. Or some variation there of.
Retour en haut