refelctive texture question

[Hooky722]

Hi all

just a quick one today:

Is it possible to make transparent canopy glass reflective if it wasn't in the first place I'm referring specifically to the ALPHA S.2 bucc has anybody ever tried this can it be done?

Regards

Hooky:salute:

[AndyG43]

I'm not an expert, and not near my home PC at the moment, but would Mdlmat do the trick here?

[OBIO]

MDLmat will not do the trick. Depending on how the material for the glass is assigned, it may be possible to make the canopy reflective and it may not be possible to make it reflective. And it may take some serious MDL editing using SCASM code extraction, modification and reinsertion...a process that is beyond my scope of ability. Today, at some point, I will take a look at the Bucc and see how the canopy glass is handled.

OBIO

[Desert Rat]

It depends if the canopy is textured or just a pure material? If textured, yes (with the odd exception due to texture sheet sharing). quite easily really.

If the canopy is not textured it can sometimes be done with SCASM editing, this is not anywhere near as easy, but it can be done ;) did I mention sometimes?

Jamie

PS. I don't have it installed to check at the moment, in fact I have nothing but the default installed after a rebuild and a distraction into painting a Comet or two.

[Desert Rat]

An easy way to spot if the glass is textured (it may not be as obvious as to have a glass_t.bmp as it may share a texture sheet. Load up the plane in ACM, solid 3D model and turn the textures on/off and note if the appearance of the glass changes (shade, etc) if it does it's definitely textured, now just track down where, lol. Sometimes it's subtle, so zoom in quite close.

Jamie

[OBIO]

I just checked...the canopy glass is not textured...it is set via the MDL material. Without doing an extensive bit of SCASM editing, the best that can be done is to give the canopy glass more specular shine using MDLmat.

OBIO

[aeromed202]

It would be neat if it could be done. I am thinking of many photos of fighter canopies like the Hornet that look like they are smeared with gas. The have a rainbow-like reflective quality. Is that just an effect of the imaging equipment or do they look like that in person?

[Tom Clayton]

It sounds to me like plexi that was photographed with a polarizing filter over the lens. You can get some interesting colors like that.

[falcon409]

. . . . . .They have a rainbow-like reflective quality. Is that just an effect of the imaging equipment or do they look like that in person?
Not sure about other transparencies (canopy glass), but the F-16 doesn't look like that normally, I have seen that rainbow effect at times in the shop under different lighting or on the line when the sun hits it a certain way, but as a general rule. . .nope.:salute:

[Desert Rat]

I've done it with the Alpha Meteors (not all yet, was just testing the theory). I'm in the middle of a repaint run with requests that need fulfilled, but if I can find some time I'll look at the banana (soonish)

3505035049

Jamie

[Hooky722]

I've just downloaded MDLmat......It looks like something I should be very Afraid of!!!!!

Hooky

[Desert Rat]

I've had a look, initially at the materials in mdlmat, only those for the VC show up, so can't edit the externals that way, could do it in SCASM, but it probably ain't worth the effort.

I fear bad news on the reflective glass. If you look closely, you'll notice that the glass is only visible when not in front of another part of the plane, move the camera and it vanishes. This means that the part draw order is wrong and that will cause problems if textured, possibly making parts behind the glass vanish, I've attached the ALPHA MB5 as an example of what happens....

35096
notice the pilot missing half his head.

Jamie

[OBIO]

I've done it with the Alpha Meteors (not all yet, was just testing the theory). I'm in the middle of a repaint run with requests that need fulfilled, but if I can find some time I'll look at the banana (soonish)

3505035049

Jamie

Ya know...I still don't care if the reflective bare metal is incorrect for the Meteor...that bird just looks good wrapped in BLING BLING!

OBIO

[Desert Rat]

model, and tex for one variant of the Meteor F8 as requested. The texture folder contains a glass_t.bmp that can be copied to the other F8 texture folder to enable reflective glass on the camo one to.

35144
35145

Jamie

PS.just to be on the safe side


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