Managing cubemap reflections on glass

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Konke
161 Posts
Posted May 25, 2014
In my map there's a lot of glass and some of them have ugly looking reflections from cubemaps. I've been trying to place cubemaps on different locations and add more and add less cubemaps in specific locations, but without success. Is it possible to just disable the glass reflections? The cubemaps work greate on other surfaces so I do really want to have them in my map. Thanks in advance!
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srs bsnss
552 Posts
Posted May 25, 2014
Replied 1 hour later
You can assign env_cubemaps to faces; if you haven't done this yet, it might help. Also, have you done the 'buildcubemaps' console command yet?

But most importantly, what do your reflections look like? Simply bad, or does it look like the reflections were done on Mars? Can you post a picture?

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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted May 25, 2014
Replied 33 minutes later

Konke wrote:
Is it possible to just disable the glass reflections?

If you aren't using custom textures, where ofc you can modulate the glass reflections, you can choose some glass materials with low/non reflections.

Try for example "glass\glasswindow007a_nospec.vmt"

Anyways, you should always build cubemaps. Make sure you have a copy of your map into your /portal 2/portal2_dlc2/maps folder. Make sure that you have placed some env_cubemaps entities in your map as well ... Then run your map and type buildcubemaps on your console.

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Konke
161 Posts
Posted May 28, 2014
Replied 2 days later
What does "nospec" stand for?


This first image shows a ugly reflection from a distant source. Don't you agree it look terrible?


This second image shows a example of another ulgy reflection. Underneath is a pool with toxic slime, which doesn't even remind of the reflection.


And the last image shows a reflection of a indicator light. The problem here is that when the lights turn from blue to yellow, the reflection still stays as blue.

So, I have a lot of big pieces of glass in my map and I would like it to stay that way. Is there a way to get around this problem? Thanks again!

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FelixGriffin
2,680 Posts
Posted May 28, 2014
Replied 15 minutes later
Nospec means no specular (i.e. mirror-like) reflections.
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Skotty
671 Posts
Posted May 28, 2014
Replied 21 minutes later
Just place an env_cubemap in front of those glasses and assign them to this cubemap. You can also increase the cubemap resolution to make it look less blurry.
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Konke
161 Posts
Posted May 28, 2014
Replied 10 minutes later
I did experiment with env_cubemap where I tried to assign the brush faces of the glass surfaces to the env_cubemap, but I didn't noticed much of a difference. Perhaps it's broken for me or I've missed something...

How do you guys handle your glass reflections? I can't be the only one with this problem, can I?

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Skotty
671 Posts
Posted May 28, 2014
Replied 3 hours later
Did you forget to type "buildcubemaps" into the console?
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Konke
161 Posts
Posted Jun 09, 2014
Replied 11 days later
Sorry for the late reply... No, I didn't forget to build cubemaps. I didn't find a adequete solution so I changed the texture to another glass texture that doesn't reflect in the same way. Too bad but it's a compromize. Thanks for the help.