Portal 2 Reflective Metals not reflecting?

Posted May 14, 2011
Something's been bugging me ever since I started mapping for Portal 2. Any of the slightly bumpy, reflective surfaces have not been reflecting. At all. I've tried using fast, normal, and HDR lighting, using cubemaps, and even starting anew in my maps, but to no avail. Is there something really obvious that I'm missing?
Thanks for your time!
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4,141 Posts
Admin
Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 3 minutes later
Do you have cubemaps? Have you built them in-game?
Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 11 minutes later
Yes I have, in both regular and HDR mode.
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4,141 Posts
Admin
Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 9 minutes later
Post a screenshot then, because if you have cubemaps and if you built them then they should be working.
Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 16 minutes later
http://tinypic.com/r/e8mv4o/7
http://tinypic.com/r/nvcyhc/7

I've checked other places for help as well, and the most help Ive gotten was "Just start a new map make a box with the textures set down a light entity and they should be working"

Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 1 minutes later
I've actually been having the same problem, but I've been putting off asking about it until my map is more final..

Have a nice day,
~Sidneys1

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4,141 Posts
Admin
Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 1 minute later
How many cubemaps do you have placed? You should, very roughly, have about 1 around each light source. Are you sure your settings even allow for refelctions enabled? It looks like you are running the game in super low detail mode.

Sidneys1 wrote:
I've actually been having the same problem, but I've been putting off asking about it until my map is more final..

I have put cubemaps in my 2 Instance example maps and they work fine...

Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 6 minutes later
Oh wow, I feel like such an idiot.
Yes, the problem was my bro keeps screwing around with the settings because he claims the game looks better that way.
In result, my shader was set to low.
When I set it to high everything worked as normal. Thanks!
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4,141 Posts
Admin
Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 1 minutes later
Punch him in the nuts and tell him the internet thinks he needs his eyes to be checked.
Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 3 hours later
All my settings are on medium (shaders and game effects) or high (models and textures).. At 720p.

Have a nice day,
~Sidneys1

Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 41 minutes later
Aha! Bumped my shaders up to high, and specularity shows up great. Runs like crap though, so I turned it back down to medium and went looking for Portal 2's equivalent of "r_specularity".. Instead found "r_showenvcubemap"! Set this to one and you get this result: http://steamcommunity.com/id/sidneys1/s ... 0784607199 Shiny portalgun! Useful :smile: Now I just need to find the cvar I was originally looking for :biggrin:

Have a nice day,
~Sidneys1

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248 Posts
Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 14 minutes later
Do you have high enough settings to see reflections?

Also, mat_specular 1?

Ups, I see you have solved the issue.

Posted May 14, 2011
Replied 13 minutes later

Motanum wrote:
Also, mat_specular 1?

Gah, it worked but now I get a lot of "trying to set a pixel shader that does not exist" errors... =P My GeForce 8400 mobile gfx card can't handle the all shaders on high, so that's not an option.

Have a nice day,
~Sidneys1

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4,141 Posts
Admin
Posted May 15, 2011
Replied 4 hours later
Yeah shock and awe, you might need a computer that was made more recently than like 4 years ago to view high quality effects.
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Posted May 15, 2011
Replied 6 hours later
Specularity shouldn't be a high-level shader. Specularity is medium settings in pretty much any game.. Don't know why they would reserve this pretty basic feature for high settings.

Have a nice day,
~Sidneys1