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FSX Reflective Textures

MichaelD

MichaelD

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When creating a reflective texture in Gmax/FSX does the material you want to add reflectivity to have to be a separate bitmap or can you define part of a composite bitmap to be reflective?

-Michael
 
Hi Michael,

It also works fine with a composite bitmap. You use the alpha channel to specify the reflection. I did a test and made only the windows of my church reflective for example.
 
Arno,

Thank you for replying. After 3 or 4 days with no answer I quit checking this thread, therefore the long delay.

So, I assume you create a mask. This is what I've done but haven't textured my object yet so I don't know if it's going to work.

I took my original texture, split it into its CMYK channels, created a mask from the "Black" channel and saved that to an Alpha Channel.

Does that sound about right?

Then, in Gmax would you just enable the settings under "Special Functionality" as shown in the SDK?

Sorry, my first time doing this.

Thanks.

-Michael
 
Hi Michael,

Take a look at the FsX Material document in the Modelling SDK. It gives a lot of nice examples on how to setup the properties of the material to get special effects.
 
Hey Arno,

Thanks for answering. My problem wasn't really figuring out how to set properties in Gmax, it was more of a question on how to construct the texture in my paint program.

I got an object to emit reflectivity by assigning a specular color but that covered the entire object and I needed to have just the glass area of the building I'm working on to be reflective.

So using a mask was the trick. The method I described above worked just fine.

Thanks again.

-Michael
 
I guess it depends on what sort of masking tools you use. Being able to draw directly onto the mask makes it a lot easier. I just draw a rectangular mask (or other shape:) over my windows (which gives me white windows on black), invert the finished mask, and adjust the brightness of the masked windows. Leaving black = very reflective, varying shades of grey allow for variable reflectiveness. White, or course = no reflection.
Then in GMAX select 'blend environment by inverse of diffuse alpha', and 'use global environment map as reflection' if you are not supplying your own reflection map.
 
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