Playing Around with reflection orbs
Quandrastorm
Join Date: 2013-01-02 Member: 177128Members, Reinforced - Diamond
Join Date: 2013-01-02 Member: 177128Members, Reinforced - Diamond
i have a pool in my map, that comes with a big glass ceiling.
and to make it look extremely cool i want the cool lighted water to reflect in the ceiling.
for this i used a reflection orb, however they are round
and the reflection that is made is also round while its a big square room and a square pool. so this looks weird
as in the attached picture
i did try to use mutiple small distance reflection orbs but they all look round and you can clearly see its not a solid reflection but it looks like mutiple mirrors/
i also tryed to give it a distance of 3000, this worked to make the reflection strait as the roundess only happents on the edge's of the orb. it also made my entire map reflect the pool on all walls, even in room cannot see the pool
so is there any way to get the reflection not round at the edges?
and to make it look extremely cool i want the cool lighted water to reflect in the ceiling.
for this i used a reflection orb, however they are round
and the reflection that is made is also round while its a big square room and a square pool. so this looks weirdas in the attached picture
i did try to use mutiple small distance reflection orbs but they all look round and you can clearly see its not a solid reflection but it looks like mutiple mirrors/
i also tryed to give it a distance of 3000, this worked to make the reflection strait as the roundess only happents on the edge's of the orb. it also made my entire map reflect the pool on all walls, even in room cannot see the pool
so is there any way to get the reflection not round at the edges?
Comments
What you could also do is forget about the water surface, and just make all the lights in the pool specular lights.
EDIT: Oh also, something I discovered recently as well: reflection probes eat file size for breakfast. Try to keep the number you have to a minimum... the probe's size doesn't matter.
Apparently it's a wide angle rendering of the surrounding applied in a round manner. So it add data to the level.
Nothing to do with real reflexion. BeigeAlbert did answer right. Though it is time and resource consuming for mapper and player. Copying a geometry expose your work to the "invalid long long long triangle in-game while ok in the editor" bug.
What you can also do is playing with lights to hide a little the corners. This trick has been extensively used on the original NS2 map.
This will only cost a couple of hours to test. Light set up is not geometry editing.
"and just make all the lights in the pool specular lights." when is a light specular?
"invalid long long long triangle in-game while ok in the editor" bug. wait wut?
This bug occurs usually when you copy a geometry. In your case copying your room to mirror it. Everything is ok in the editor but when you play it... it clearly looks different like mashed 3D.
You can find a trhead about that. Look for 'invalid triangle'
Specular lighting is a cheat that video games use to create the illusion of a light source's reflection, despite the fact that every light in this game (and most games) is an infinitesimally small point in space that shouldn't have any reflection. TLDR: it makes shiny spots. EDIT: Oh I think we should have mentioned that the "point" and "spot" light types have a "specular" option... that's what we're talking about.
Oh wow! I never realized THAT'S what causes the bug! At any rate, there's no reason to shy away from copy+pasting, just know that IF this error does occur for you, all that you need to do is save, close the editor, open the editor & your map again, make NO changes, save again.
Then removing it when all is working properly of course. It tends to happen more as your map grows in numbers (vertex, lines,).
Really? Huh... always worked for me.
and yes i do have had the issues where bit parts of my maps whre screwed up. that sucks especialy since my map is still so small
and yes i didnt know specular was a setting on the light but i found it out a few hours ago, it does add a more skiney spot in the middle of the light
Yea I copy + paste a lot too.
Several reasons why a face isn't created with the line or rectangle tool:
1. The edges aren't actually connected (i.e. a square that's actually just 4 straight lines that don't share vertices, but that LOOKS like it's all connected up. Use welding to fix these non-closed loops.)
2. The edges making up the face would result in a non-planar face. To illustrate what non-planar means, make a rectangle, select one vertex, and lift it waaayyy up. Notice how screwed up and distorted that rectangle looks now? You can force spark to make non-planar faces by selecting all the edges (again, ensuring that it IS in fact a CLOSED loop), going to select tool, and hitting alt+c. If it doesn't make the face, something else is going on.
3. A face actually WAS created, it's just facing away from you, and you can't see it. Ctrl+f to flip faces.
4. Spark is having a hissy fit. Cure with fire, and lots of it. Example:
-Draw a rectangle.
-Inset a smaller rectangle inside this one, and extrude this new smaller one downwards.
-On the big, first rectangle, divide one of the edges into 3 parts by clicking down 2 new vertices. This makes 3 edges.
-Of these 3 new edges, extrude the two outer ones a good distance.
-Now extrude the middle edge. If the planet's have aligned properly, a new face will be created encompassing all the faces, even the void created by extruding that smaller rectangle downwards. If you delete this big face, you'll see there was no face created by extruding the middle edge.
Rectangle tool should be used with caution... it does strange things sometimes.
I generally use extrude its the quickest way to make a level but i use extrude on edges not on faces.
I don't beleive there's a limit on reflection orbs except the pc on which palyers run the map.
Which raises the question if they are a good guideline...
Here you place an orb that will apply reflection on all the surroundings.
in my lateast chamber, i used over > 100 spot lights in a small room
it has water in it, and i wanted to make the water look less clear so i stacked up on spot lights with the fog cloud effect \o/
the result looks good and cool, but it also looks realy extreme in the editor
THAT is going to lead to performance problems... you probably don't need that many spotlights. Also, I'd recommend keeping the atmospherics very low (<0.1) as you don't want it to impact gameplay too much... not to mention most player just have it turned off b/c of the stupid marine flashlight blinding everybody.
(runs fine on my GTX660TI)
Switch to powerpoint now and you wont notice any difference playing in rooms like that!
Not everybody has a 660ti. Hell, I have a gtx 780, so I never have any problems at all, but that doesn't mean I can go crazy with details.