REFLECTION MAPPING
5 messages in this thread
HELLO IS ANYBODY OUT THERE………. I DONT'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PREVIOUS
MESSAGE SO I'LL TRY AGAIN (MUST BE GREMLINS… OR OPERATOR HEADSPACE ON MY PART
) CAN ANYONE TELL ME HOW TO GET TEXT THAT WAS CREATED IN THE SHAPER AND LOFTED
IN THE LOFTER TO UTILIZE REFLECTION MAPPING ON THE TEXT FACES AS WELL AS THE
SIDES……….???????
Anthony, there are at least a dozen different ways of getting text to look
reflective. They include:
First, a bevel is important to make text look metallic.
– always put a bevel on the text (remember my recent trick I relayed here
on the forum about always beveling above the 0 line. bring the entire
bevel up above 0, and then bevel in to 0 and it should be much easier)
– the bevel should be rounded if possible
Second, the side faces should have more reflection blur than the front faces.
Third, there are alot of different ways to treat the front faces:
– use a hi-res (at least 700-line) 24-bit map with alot of color in it.
Alan Iglesias recently wrote about this for 3D Artist. He can describe
this technique to you in more detail.
– use a flat-mirror on the front faces, and reflect an object whose normals
are facing towards the object, but away from the camera (so the camera
can't see it). Texture map a blurry version of the refmap on that object.
You can then rotate and move the "reflection object" and the reflection
will move on the text.
– use an auto-cubic reflection map for the front faces. This has reflection
blur control built-in, and can provide spectacular results.
I'm sorry that I don't have more time to get into details and more techniques,
but perhaps some of the other folks here can contribute to this thread. I'm in
the middle of a zillion deadlines at the moment.
– G
Gary –
Could you please re-iterate your beveling technique. I have your original
message about doing the bevel but I don't quite understand. Are you saying to
drag the entire baseline to say +5 units, then insert a vertex where the bevel
would start and then drag the bevel end vertex back to the 0 line? I have, up
to now, been doing it manually in the shaper and it works pretty well – but is
quite a bit of work. Hope I can figure out your trick. BTW – I like the idea of
an "invisible" object to help with reflection map "busy-ness".
Thanks much Dave Mennenoh
You've got it. Just drag the entire baseline in the positive direction, and
then insert a vertex where the bevel would start and then bevel back to the 0
line. Exactly! Works very well.
– G
Hello, Anthony.
I left you a detailed message a couple of days ago concerning your questions
about reflection mapping. Maybe it got deleted accidently — anyway, this was
the jist of it…
Although it goes without saying, Gary's suggestions are all excellent ways of
obtaining the effect you are looking for. A thorough review of the tutorials
concerning reflections should help as well.
After reading your message, it seemed to me that you were trying to use a
standard spherical reflection map and weren't getting enough detail off the
front faces. Because the flat faces don't sample as much of the map as the
curved faces do, they tend to show less detail. I have dealt with this by
simply increasing the complexity of the map in a paint program, by shrinking
the map and "stamping" down multiple copies, maybe an array 3×3 or so. After a
little experimentation, you should get the reflective qualities you are looking
for. Keep in mind you may have to use the original map for the non-flat faces,
if the detail from the new map is too high for them.
Good luck!
-Alan Iglesias