blending cubemaps?

[Wesley Tack]

I was wondering if this is possible in source (if not it would be cool). Or maybe I'm just not placing cubemaps correctly?

Things is, when you go from one room to the next the cubemaps on your weapon change instantly from the cubemap in one room to the cubemap in the next one, so in the blink of an eye the reflections on a weapon change and it looks weird and not so nice. I was wondering if you can have cubemaps blend in so that the transition from one to the other room isn't so hard, and instead it nicely fade in/out to the next?

Or are there any other tips or tricks to make this look better?

Thanks!

[Minos]

I've noticed that too. The only way would be to place more cube maps so the differences between them aren't too great I believe.

[Wesley Tack]

Rob (Briscoe) told me on msn to use phong shading on my weapons instead, and I guess he's right too, it looks much better in the end.

Back to the drawing board... Here are two weapons I quickly added a normal map to and phong shading:

I'll be tweaking it a bit further later tonight.

[robert.briscoe]

I love my Phongs! Yes just try to avoid them looking too plastic. Take time to make a good exponent map and they will look sexy as hell

[Schmung]

Phongs are great for weapons, it's just a shame that you have to use a normal map as well unless you're on OB. In Ep1 you can just have your texture budget eaten away by unnecessary normal maps when all you want is a decent phong map.

[dux]

That gantry could use some work

[AlexM]

yeah it's too bad phong requires normal maps in ep1

[Wesley Tack]

Phongs are great for weapons, it's just a shame that you have to use a normal map as well unless you're on OB. In Ep1 you can just have your texture budget eaten away by unnecessary normal maps when all you want is a decent phong map.

so OB doesn't need a normal map? hmmm will test that out tomorrow, as I was a bit worried about that too.

That gantry could use some work

I'll see to replace it with the overhead crane model I have in other areas, thanks for pointing it out

[Wesley Tack]

Phongs are great for weapons, it's just a shame that you have to use a normal map as well unless you're on OB. In Ep1 you can just have your texture budget eaten away by unnecessary normal maps when all you want is a decent phong map.

How exactly do you get the phone shader to work without the normal map? I tried disabling the normal map but I don't see it working ingame?

Here's how my .vmt is set up currently:

"OffLVertexLitGenericBW"

{

	"$SpecialVisionAmount" "0"

	"Proxies"

	{

		"SpecialVision"

		{

			"resultVar" "$SpecialVisionAmount"

		}

	}

	"$baseTexture" "models/weapons/omnicol_map1"

	"$phongexponenttexture" "models/weapons/omnicol_map1_spec"

//	"$bumpmap" "models/weapons/omnicol_map1_normal"

//	"$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1

	"$model" "1"

	"$phong" "1"

	"$phongboost" "3"

//	"$phongfresnelranges"	"[0.05 0.15 0.25]"

	"$phongfresnelranges"	"[1 2 4]"

}

[Pampers]

its not possible on the ob either afaik, what you can do is to make a tiny(32x32) flat normal that you put on every model that dont need its own normalmap and then apply phong

[TermInator525]

thats how valve did in left 4 dead. there is a standard normal texture for phong 64*64px.

[Wesley Tack]

thats how valve did in left 4 dead. there is a standard normal texture for phong 64*64px.

Where can you have a look at the L4D weapon models? I have 4 .gcf's:

- base

- binaries

- client binary

- sound

(and I can't seem to find materials/models anywhere in these).

I'd like to take a look and see how they have their weapons set up as mine keep doing annoying stuff that doesn't look good...

[TermInator525]

you can find the l4d materials in the pak01_dir.vpk in the common/left 4 dead/left4dead/ folder.

one example.

basic world Pipemodels:

VertexLitGeneric

{

$baseTexture "models\props_pipes/PipeSet02d_512_001a"

$bumpmap "effects/flat_normal"

$phong 1

$phongboost 1

$phongexponent 10

$BASEMAPLUMINANCEPHONGMASK 1

$phongfresnelranges "[3 8 60]"

}

v_model Medkit:

VertexLitGeneric

{

$baseTexture "models\w_models\eq_medkit/w_eq_medkit"

$bumpmap "effects/flat_normal"

$phongboost 1

$phongexponent 1

$phongfresnelranges "[0 2 30]"

$BASEMAPLUMINANCEPHONGMASK 1

$phong 0

"GPU>=2?$phong" 1

}

and the m16

VertexLitGeneric

{

$baseTexture "models\v_models\Weapons\rifle/m16a2"

$bumpmap "effects/flat_normal"

$phongboost 1

$phongexponent 10

$phongfresnelranges "[10 10 30]"

$BASEMAPLUMINANCEPHONGMASK 1

$color2 "[1.5 1.5 1.5]"

$ambientocclusion 1

$phong 0

"GPU>=2?$phong" 1

}

so as you see valve used only generic normalmaps for the phong effect. simple eh?