Glossy texture?

[Spinell]

Hello! Need some info:

I want to make a wallpaper texture that has a black background and a different black pattern (victorian). My idea was to make it so that when light is shined on the walpaper, in SL, the patter would reflect the light in a glossy way.

I'm guessing this isn't really possible in SL, but I'd though I'd ask. Also, this is for a room I'm making in Blender 2.66. I'm texturing the walls of the room so if there's any tool inside Blender that I could use for texturing this for the glossy effect, please let me kow.

 

Thank you!!

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Two ways I can think of, one a bit clumsy, the other will take time.

First one is making a glossy plane, completely black. Slightly in front of that a plane with an alpha channel (black for pattern, white for background, so you get a plane with holes). The colour of that plane should also be completely black. On the wall itself there won't be any sorting issues, but when people walk by it, it might show.

Second one, much better, is using the new material system. Too bad it's not implemented in the official viewer yet.

[LepreKhaun]

Until we get materials (whenever that might be!) SL isn't able to do glossy, though the effect can be faked.

 

If I'm not mistaken, you're wanting to do Victorian flocked or velvet wall paper on a metallic base ( such as shown in http://fabricwallpaper.blogspot.com/2012/04/velvet-wallpaper.html ). Though Blender can bake specular maps ( see http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/tutorials/31727-tutorial-baking-specular-blender.html for one of a number of ways to do that ), it is more effective with 3d surfaces. Since wallpaper is basically a flat surface, I'd make such patterns in Gimp or PhotoShop.

 

In the image program, you'd have a solid flocking layer in the darker of the two colors. For the second, metallic layer, I would go lighter, black on black will not show very well in SL. Perhaps the color combination shown at the top of the illustrations in my first link or a bit darker. On this metallic layer do lighter streaks across it to fake reflections. If you have wall sconces, have halo areas surrounding their location to give the illusion of light reflecting from it. The streaks and light areas should be separate layers for greater control of the effect. Then, it's simply a matter of having a mask layer with the pattern the flocking is applied to the metallic sub layer(s). Make the resulting texture tile-able in the horizontal and you're good to go!

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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LepreKhaun wrote:

Until we get materials (whenever that might be!) SL isn't able to do glossy,

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We've had "shininess" for ages.....but it's a "per texture" feature. That's why I suggested the double plane.

[Drongle McMahon]

Here is a linkset of two cylinders at the same location. The inside one has dimensions 0.005 less than the outer one, and is a solid black colour on the blank texture with shininess set to medium. The outer one has an alpha texture with appropriate repeats. Alpha textures can't be shiny. This is with advanced lighting, but it works without it too.

 

[Spinell]

Drongle, that is GLORIOUS!!! It is exactly what I wanted to do and it looks brilliant.

Now, I actually haven't built anything inside SL for a while nor have I had the need for alphas in a long time, so could you please guide me along? Ah, and I was never good with creating alphas. Also, I use photoshop. Also, I was going to use a brush to create the victorian pattern, so that might make things easier?

Finally, From what I could tell, the walls where the wallpaper is to applied (both the blck background as wll as the pattern) need to be SL in-game prims in order to set up the reflexion. Correct? Which means, I can't include the walls in my building project in Blender, as a full mesh object, correct?

Yes, I'm very bad at this, I need to go slowly. Bear with me.

[LepreKhaun]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

Here is a linkset of two cylinders at the same location. The inside one has dimensions 0.005 less than the outer one, and is a solid black colour on the blank texture with shininess set to medium. The outer one has an alpha texture with appropriate repeats. Alpha textures can't be shiny. This is with advanced lighting, but it works without it too.

 

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May I remind you that SL's "shininess" illusion only works when the world sun is up. At night, even under pinpoint lighting, one will see this, possibly undesirable in interior decor:

[Drongle McMahon]

You may if you want to. It may well be that the type of thing will not work in the conditions where it is needed. It It's not very good anyway. Everything will be better with materials (we hope!)

[LepreKhaun]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

... Everything will be better with materials (we hope!)

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True that!

 

And with the release of the project viewer, we may well soon see an entirely different world here. Or, at least, a different set of kludges one must master to create within SL.

[Drongle McMahon]

I haven't tried, but it should be easier to set up in a mesh than with prims. You would just need two very slightly separated faces with thier normals pointing the same direction. Getting at the textures to edit them in SL might be awkward unless you make sure a small piece of the underneath one is accessible somewhere where it won't be visible.

As for doing it in Blender, I don't think I would want to. You can set up something with an image using alpha influence to see that things are arranged properly, but it won't look much like it will with SL shiny. Blender is, of course, capable of making the desired effect in one material without needing the overlayed surfaces. Yo be quite honest, I would wait until the SL materials stuff is released (real soon now?), with proper specular and environmental lighting maps, and not bother with this hack.

[Drongle McMahon]

Here's the sort of thing you can get with the (experimental) materials viewer. I'm a novice using it, so expect others to do much btter.

[Spinell]

Well, the problem with SL is just you never know when things are gonna be released. I mean, is the deformer project still going at all? I've heard LL dropped it, some say it's comming soon. You just never know. I'm not going to just wait idly; I think the best solution is to go ahead with the building and then, when the materials part come around, I'll just update the build. It's not for sale, it's for me, and I don't mind.

The main reason why I was asking if it could (at the moment) be done inside blender was simply for prim management, so I don't go over my limit.

That said, I will try out the trick with the prims. Now, about the alpha mask: which part should look black in the alpha chanel? The invisible background or the part with the pattern?

 

[Drongle McMahon]

Ah yes. I'm always getting that the wrong way round. (It gets much worse when you use materials!). Black is transparent and white is opaque. S in this case the parts where the shiny has to show through are black. Here is the alpha channel of the texture I used. The colour channels were all black.

   It's a from a fractal, by the way.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

You can still do it in Blender to save some prims. Do exactly what Drongle and I suggested with the double planes and the alpha map. Just don't so it in SL, do it in Blender. Put a unique material on both faces so you can texture them seperately in SL. You won't be able to see the effect in Blender, not that that matters.

[LepreKhaun]

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Spinell wrote:

Well, the problem with SL is just you never know when things are gonna be released. I mean, is the deformer project still going at all? I've heard LL dropped it, some say it's comming soon. You just never know. I'm not going to just wait idly; I think the best solution is to go ahead with the building and then, when the materials part come around, I'll just update the build. It's not for sale, it's for me, and I don't mind.

The main reason why I was asking if it could (at the moment) be done inside blender was simply for prim management, so I don't go over my limit.

That said, I will try out the trick with the prims. Now, about the alpha mask: which part should look black in the alpha chanel? The invisible background or the part with the pattern?

 

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As long as your build is just for personal use, the 'shininess' hack may be workable. You won't have any problem with z-fighting if your planes are adequately separated and the alpha sorting bug is something we all have to live with in SL so that may be a non-issue for you. And you can set your parcel to always be daytime to avoid the effect from blacking out on you.

 

As far as using prims in your link set with mesh, since the mesh LI will most likely be set by its Download weight due to scaling, prims (specifically boxes, cylinders and prisms) can be used in those cases w/o adding to LI. But discussing the pros&cons of the mesh/prim hybrid in architectural builds has come up before and might be best left to its own thread.

[LepreKhaun]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

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LepreKhaun wrote:

Until we get materials (whenever that might be!) SL isn't able to do glossy,

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We've had "shininess" for ages.....but it's a "per texture" feature. That's why I suggested the double plane.

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Unsure why you said that, but in no sense can SL's poor implementation of "shininess" be mistaken for the glossy obtainable with specular mapping.

[ Illustrative picture is credited to Tiffy Vella, who is using the SL Mat projects viewer ]

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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LepreKhaun wrote:

Unsure why you said that, but in no sense can SL's poor implementation of "shininess" be mistaken for the glossy obtainable with specular mapping.

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I said it because it's the only dynamic way to create the effect at this moment. If you reread my initial answer, you'll see I'd prefer the material option. The fact is though, it's not in the main viewer yet.

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You won't have any problem with z-fighting if your planes are adequately separated and the alpha sorting bug is something we all have to live with in SL

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There won't be any sorting issues within the object itself. The lower of the two planes doesn't have a texture with alpha channel, so the only sorting issues will be between the front plane and objects in front of it.

 

 

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As far as using prims in your link set with mesh, since the mesh LI will most likely be set by its Download weight due to scaling, prims (specifically boxes, cylinders and prisms) can be used in those cases w/o adding to LI. But discussing the pros&cons of the mesh/prim hybrid in architectural builds has come up before and might be best left to its own thread.

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If you build in mesh, you can combine several walls into one object. Two walls in prims will add up to a landimpact of 2, I'm pretty sure the mesh version will stay at one, even with a whole lot more walls.

 

 

[LepreKhaun]

First of all, my initial posting in this thread was being prepared while you posted yours, so I was unaware of your proposal. Your reply to me seemed to be out of line since I was answering not only the title of the thread but the OP's wish to "... make it so that when light is shined on the walpaper, in SL, the patter would reflect the light in a glossy way", which we both agree will not be possible until the materials project comes to be.

 

Secondly, "objects in front of it" may well become an issue if, say, a potted plant is placed within the room.

 

Third of all, you're incorrect in saying "Two walls in prims will add up to a landimpact of 2". Within a link set with mesh, where everything comes under the new accounting, 2 (untortured) boxes will, at most, have a LI of 1, and may well add nothing to the land impact of the object if Download weight is setting LI.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I didn't mean to offend you in any way, but it is possible, as I described and as Drongle even showed. It's clumsy and far from perfect under all circumstances, but it works.

Objects in front may cause issues, yes, didn't I already say that twice?

Two walls, made the way as proposed, would need four prims, not two. Four prims will have a landimpact of two. You're absolutely right when linked to a mesh there might be no landimpact rise at all. Why use prims though if you are already building in mesh? To me it feels like repairing a car with timber.

[LepreKhaun]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

I didn't mean to offend you in any way ...

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No offense taken then. All good in the neighborhhod.