Chrome effect on textures

[Devil Master]

If you have seen the "bloblets" in Unreal, you'll have seen that their surfaces have a nice chrome effect. How can I do that in my textures? I tried to replace the standard bloblet texture with a texture I made, but new texture does NOT have any chrome effect!

[Bean]

I really dont know what you're talking about. graemlins/doh.gif
Do you have quick screenshot that we can check out (and hopefully enlighten me images/icons/grin.gif )?

[Theseus314]

I think he wants to make a DavidM Ghey window type texture. The solution is meshmaker. Use and ye shall learn.

[NutWrench]

Are you talking about specular highlights? Where it looks like a spotlight is being reflected by the texture?

[Devil Master]

I don't know how it's called, but I'm talking about this kind of chrome effects:
http://devilmaster.supereva.it/chrome1.jpg
http://devilmaster.supereva.it/chrome2.jpg

[Bean]

easy to do.

add a mesh into your level and go to it's properties.
Under Display, set bMeshEnviroMap to true.

It's Unreal's rather primitive (fake) environment mapping.

[Devil Master]

Nope... it doesn't work! I tried it with the automag mesh, expecting it to become shiny, instead it had no effect!

[Wild Falkon]

Hmmm, if you want it to work with a texture, I don't have a clue. However, here's another way.

You'll need Meshmaker to do these next steps btw.

1.) In UrealEd, make a square brush that has the same size properties of the texture. (e.g. if a texture is 256 x 256, make a 256 x 256 x 12 square)

2.) Apply the texture, and have any details you want to it.

3.) Find what you want to have the 'chrome' effect (for example, say you want the window in a texture to have it, you'd need to have another intersecting brush to make the window in the texture brush.)

4.) For any surfaces you want chromed, apply the 'Mirror' property to it. This makes the texture environment mapped, which makes the texture take on a wavy effect in the game. If you want a cool envoronment map effect, use the same texture that's on the first screenshots you posted.

5.) Intersect the brush as you want the texture to look, and save it as an exported brush. Remember the location.

6.) Load up MeshMaker, and follow the steps. It will create a scaleable decoration that you can place anywhere, and it will have the chrome effect applied to it.

[Devil Master]

I asked this to the Unreal4Ever guys. They basically replied: "We hacked the materials in the model package with a program we can't give you. There's another program which can do the same thing, but we don't know its name." graemlins/mryuck.gif

[NutWrench]

I think the highlights were added directly to the textures with a paint program before being imported into Unreal. The gold texture in Unreal (great for making gold statues) has lots of areas that contain lighter and darker shades.