Making A Mirror

[dorain8]

I am very new to map making, and am reading as many tutorials i can as i try and make my 1st map idea (its a duzie)... I have a bathroom in the map and need a mirror in the map, however i am yet to figure out how to actually make a mirror.

The room is a public bathroom so the mirror would need to basically be part of the wall not. any advice and or help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Raeven0]

True mirrors are impossible. The closest substitute you can get is a func_monitor brush with a point_camera in front of it.

 

[Mess]

Reflective textures are not impossible - take a look at how the water textures work.

 

[Osilo]

He didn't say reflective textures are impossible, he said ture mirrors. Which is true. The source engine doesn't have that capability. I'd say the func_monitor and point_camera idea is a great substitute.

 

[dorain8]

i shall rectify the situation by making the bathroom mirror out shattered glass material bakced by a metal wall i suppose.... thanks for the help anyway guys

 

[Penguin929]

I didn't even think of that camera idea. All I did was put a thin piece of clear glass over a grey thing with a cubemap and called it good.

 

[DrDevin]

Make a pure white texture make it use cubemaps and assign it a 512x512 cubemap. Thats what I've done and it works pretty good if you dont want to use a camera.

This will get you started. You can tweak it with other settings:

"LightmappedGeneric"

{
"$basetexture" "house/furniture_mirror"
"$envmap" "env_cubemap"
"$surfaceprop" "glass"
}

 

[Fonaki]

Make a pure white texture make it use cubemaps and assign it a 512x512 cubemap. Thats what I've done and it works pretty good if you dont want to use a camera.

This will get you started. You can tweak it with other settings:

"LightmappedGeneric"

{
"$basetexture" "house/furniture_mirror"
"$envmap" "env_cubemap"
"$surfaceprop" "glass"
}

I hope I'm not the only one who didn't understand anything of that...

 

[zeOx]

I take it you haven't made any materials for source then?

 

[Pesmerga]

Reflective textures are not impossible - take a look at how the water textures work.

Water reflections are done during compile, and only work on the z axis.

Do what was previous suggested, cameras and TV's, but it's still not a true mirror because the image doesn't change relative to your position. You could code it, though.

 

[UltraProAnti]

this is all very nice but you won't see yourself in the mirror in hl2 using the point_viewcontrol method. gordon seems to be invisible

 

[Pesmerga]

this is all very nice but you won't see yourself in the mirror in hl2 using the point_viewcontrol method. gordon seems to be invisible

There is no Gordon model.

 

[Raeven0]

You don't see yourself in monitors in multiplayer, either.

Your reflective texture idea is nice, but what about people whose video cards don't support reflections? The ideal solution works for everyone, not just the rich.

 

[MetalPiranha]

Yeh, to make a mirror you'd also have to sort out a gordon model because there isnt one in source.

Bit more effort than just a texture there ^ :E

 

[G0lden Eagl3]

You can make a peice of reflective glass, it will reflect everything around you apart from Gordon. There isnt a Gordon model other wise true mirrors would be possible.

 

[Osilo]

Well the model bit isn't important for glass. It uses an env_map which is static and doesn't include the player in any fashion.

 

[dorain8]

would the reflective glass reflect a ct or terrorist model? because i am making this for cs:s

 

[Mess]

Water reflections are done during compile, and only work on the z axis.

Do what was previous suggested, cameras and TV's, but it's still not a true mirror because the image doesn't change relative to your position. You could code it, though.

You're right about the z-axis but water reflections aren't done during compile - they are real time. That is why you can select to reflect everything: moving models such as Combine and physics objects.

 

[G0lden Eagl3]

would the reflective glass reflect a ct or terrorist model? because i am making this for cs:s

Well, its hard to say. It might. I think i tried it and it didnt work, though, if it does work, be sure to notify us at once! :afro:

 

[Rennmniscant]

I wonder if it'd work in Gmod multiplayer aswell... You seem to have a character model in that.

Actually, just remembering for a second... anyone ever notice with the crossbow, the small viewfinder has a small slighty distorted representation of what you're looking at. Could someone not figure out how they did it for that?

If not, the camera idea would work perfectly well.
If you can figure out how to make true mirrors in CSS, that'd be SO much fun!

 

[Limpet]

It's coded in and uses the cubemaps.

If you watch it you'll see that it doesn't change exactly with your environment as you move but "jumps" to what you see periodically.
The Awp and Scout do it in CS:S as well.

 

[Penguin929]

Using the monitor, the picture wouldn't change with your angle of view would it?