hope over the the Exchage and search for 'reflective' in clothing.. there's three really SHINY outfits there...

how the smeg are they doing that? I'm still on the quest for latex/PVC bodysuits clothing and this would work nicely??

But HOW?

It requires artistic ability and a steady hand. The "shininess" comes from using color burn and color dodge in your image editing software to create the illusion of reflection. Parts of the garment that are raised are dodged, with part of the color removed or lightened, and the parts that are in shadow are burned, which darkens the color.

no.. i've seen that technique, I don't think that is it.. if you d/l these you see the highlights/shine are moving across the surface of the clothing as it moves.. this is something quite different...

check this one out..

http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/sim...&key=reflective

I let bodyshop pull it apart and got a BUNCH of files..

body_reflected~stdMatNormalMapTextureName.bmp
body_reflected~stdMatEnvCubeTextureName.bmp
body_reflected~stdMatEnvCubeTextureName_alpha.bmp
body_reflected~stdMatBaseTextureName.bmp
body_reflected~stdMatBaseTextureName_alpha.bmp
body~stdMatNormalMapTextureName.bmp
body~stdMatEnvCubeTextureName.bmp
body~stdMatEnvCubeTextureName_alpha.bmp
body~stdMatBaseTextureName.bmp
body~stdMatBaseTextureName_alpha.bmp

EnvCube??

Yeah, that outfit and I think the criminal track one have some reflective maps built in that you can play with. Experiment. See what you come up with.

In Phervers' experiment he said that most of the clothing does not accept evironment mapping for metalic shine. However he was successful at increasing specularity which would also make the clothing shiny.

Then again Phervers test was fairly early on, and it's possible that he just didn't have the right tools to make all the needed changes.

RG

RGiles... well, maybe someone will take another look, I saw that on the exchange that they have also come up with 'mirrored/reflective' sunglasses....

So far all I see is specularity, not reflectivity.

Mirror reflections are not possible without editing one of the root files of an object. Environment cube reflection might be. But there is no environment cube reflection happening on those sunglasses, based on the pic displayed. That's just specularity, which has already been done on this site long long ago.

RG

I know I Simder over at SimderZ has a reflective teen outfit. Check it out: http://simderz.moonfruit.com/

Do you mean the one with the steel toes? That's the only teen thing I can find on the site. I can tell you for the latex shine, she's using an extremely well done painted-on shine. Unfortunately I can't download anything else from there right now as the site's gone over its bandwidth limit for the day.

RG

Hmm.. ok... I'll poke about for that tutorial then?

just wanted to add my two cents. Often if you change the texture (to something shiny or of high contrast) the result can sometimes be drastically different lighting effects if you do it right. Pretty nifty.

I've noticed that, too. Actually, the original mesh file in the game for that teen dress IS reflective, if you take a better look at it. If you export it, you come up with those reflection bitmaps, that works like alphas - I mean, the closer to white it is, more it will reflect.
I don't know if there are other outfitd in the game wich have reflective effects, but that one is a good start.

I just (in the last 2 minutes) d/l'ed some things... maybe it reset?

Yep, you're right BloodyWine. It has a sort of reflection of itself... which is rather odd. It's not a standard environment cube at all, and is definitely not a mirror reflection. Very cool. Now I wonder just what effect it would have if we put a normal environment cube type of image in that slot, rather than a duplicate of the dress texture.

RG

RGiles, here's the TSR post with SiimderZ reflection map work: http://forums.thesimsresource.com/s...23&postcount=10

Sorry, but here's the deal...

That particular dress has 2 material groups assigned at the mesh level. the reflective parts take a different material then the non-reflective parts. I experimented with the dress. The 2 materials are of different types. One is called "SimSkin" which is what's applied to most sim clothing. The other is "SimStandardMaterial".

When you apply a transparency (alpha) mask to a SimSkin material, the sim's body skin will show through the transparent parts. This material type can not be made reflective (although it can be made shiny with specularity so it reflects only the light source). Applying the code for environment cubes to this type of material has no effect at all.

SimStandardMaterial can have an environment cube reflection, but it can not be made transparent in the way that the sim's body will show through the transparency. If you apply this type of material to an object that's supposed to have transparent parts, you will either lose the transparency and the sim will be covered by the clothing from the neck down including the hands, or you make the parts of the body covered by the transparency map completely invisible.

Below are 3 same images to explain what I mean. The first is with the reflective material applied to the whole dress (transparency defaults to off). The second is the same, only with the transparency on. The first could be useful for a robot, but isn't going to be useful for much else (though maybe objects like sunglasses). The second is just plain not useful. Unless clothing has separate parts assigned in the mesh itself, and the reflective part does not need transparency, we're not going to get much use out of this, I think.

Edited to add, after playing around some it appears that even specularity does not work in the SimSkin material type. It appeared to, but them when I increased the value (a lot!) the amount of shine did not change. It will however work in the sunglasses, and environment cube should as well.

RG

Interesting... actually I (and a coupla of others) would have a use for the first case... some thought for 'shiny' latex/PVC/spandex bodysuits (and masks, head pieces..) think 'superheros'...

now if I can just figure out in english what you said, I may experiment :D

Make a clone of that dress. Just start a new project of it in bodyshop, and import to game without bothering to change the textures. Then open the newly created package file in SimPE and look at the Material Description files in Plugin View. Near the top, you'll see the Type entry. (Although it looks like you can edit this Type, you can't. The changes will not be saved.) If you need help with it, I can probably set you in the right direction.

Erm, OK, looks like if I don't give more detailed information I will be slain. So... Here's what I did to make Bink13y's C-3PO (below) shiny.

Open the package file for the skin in SimPE. On the top right, under File Types select "Material Definition". You'll see a whole long list of them appear on the top left, since this is a full genetic skin.

For each Material Definition listed, click on it and make sure you're in Plugin View in the tabs on the bottom of the screen. You should see the Properties Tab inside of Plugin View. This is visible by default.

I did 3 things to each Material Definition file, all under Properties.

Click on stdMatEnvCubeCoef. Change the Value of it on the left side of the screen to a group of 3 numbers between 0 and 1. I picked 0.2,0.2,0.2
The closer the number is to 1, the more reflective the material will be.

Click on stdMatEnvCubeMode. Change the Value on the left from "none" to "reflection".

Click stdMatBaseTextureName, and then click the blue text "add". It will duplicate that entry at the bottom of the list. Leave the Value alone. This time change the Name to stdMatEnvCubeTextureName

Click the Commit button before moving on to the next Material Definition.

(If you notice the strange coloring in my sample pic on the scalp especially, that was due to an error I made in testing. Yours won't have that.)

RG

I have played around with good old C-3PO a bit more. I find that giving him one of the maxis default envionment cube images looks nicer than having him reflect his own texture. The one I've used here is called "reflectiondarkgold-envcube". The bronze ones are nice on him too, but maybe just a bit too orange.

To do this, when you add the stdMatEnvCubeTextureName to the Properties, rather than leaving the same Value from the base texture, you replace the value with the name of the Maxis envionment cube you prefer.

To find these filenames (and seewhat they look like) look in the file
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D\Textures.package

All the environment cube image names start with "reflection" so they are easy to find in the name maps.

I also set the stdMatEnvCubeCoef to the value 0.5,0.5,0.5 in this sample pic. This is just sort of trial and error. I'd suggest applying settings to just one Material Definition file, testing in bodyshop, and then when you're happy with the settings in that first file then update the rest of them to match. Less work that way.

RG

Ok, i folowed your mini tutorial to the letter. had to change the letter just a tad cuz it's called a "Material Description".
when i checked the SimDroid in bodyshop there was no change, i then checked it in the game on max settings and still no change. i went and downloaded the teenie reflective dress and compared the changes in it;s material description file to see if i goofed up a spelling. the dress displays reflexive, the spelling is correct, butstill nothing.
i then went in and changed the reflectivity value all the way up from 0.2 to 1,
and STILL no change.

Heres the full genetic skin RARed

Like I said in chat, that file is definitely working. I wanted to show you a wicked side effect... if you put clothes on her, whatever she wears also becomes metallic

Rechesked all settings, reflection is on and all is set to the max. Still displays as a flat mat texture in both bodyshop AND CAS...*sob*

Ok, this is DEFINETLY comming from my laptop. could it have this file stored elswhere and be reading fromthat file insted?
I'll do a file search for the string: cb3c079879fa3020af8cc9480ca2cf78.package

I think it might be possible that your video on the laptop is not capable of displaying some of this.

In any case, check your display options and make sure material and object detail is set to high.