"chrome effect" challenge

Teraur is making the shape of the new mclaren MP4/21. For sure, it will be great.
But for this car, the matter will be probably the livery.
After to have seen the first shots and read some views, it seems that it will be difficult to simulate the

i think the best way to do it is to have a much darker grey (with white alphas in-game), but with many highlights - imposed reflections and shadows (at varying transparencies) but that would depend on whether you use dynamic environments or not. Might be best waiting for the template of Teraur's new car first...

tried yesterday some chrome on helmets

that looks nice kaid, we must try to work together to find the sollution

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how did you get that Kaid?

well , on theory , it's not challenge. I support it's right that use a dark color + white alpha , however , highlights should not be done , only shaders give a black looks in color , no shaders in alpha.

A Racing and Rail fan.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2006 05:31PM by Enzojz.

Chrome is black with a very high reflectivity index. Painting it black and doing the alpha on 100% should give a nice chrome if the game engine is accurate...

This topic is a really good idea.

Are any of you familiar with how F1C/GTR/Rfactor does reflections in the game?

In Zmod you have the model and in material editor, you select the body texture and it has primary texture .. Renault_body1.dds for example.. but also a reflection/light map texture, called emap_chrome or emap_body etc.

I think GP4 does this differently, and has the reflection maps in the individual track folder. With trees for most tracks or buildings in the texture for like Montreal or Monaco.

I'm not sure if you used added a GTR type relection map in material editor that it would show up when the model is loading into gp4 environment. But I don't see how it wouldn't as it would be mapped to the model therefore when the model is loading, the texture would be called.

Maybe you could use 2 or 3 body textures but keep all of the chrome parts on ONE texture.

So have mp420_1.tGA and mp420_2.tGA. But have all the chrome parts on mp420_1.tGA and the red and dark grey parts on mp420_2.tGA.

Then add an extra "reflection map" to mp420_1.tGA ONLY.

And then play with this reflection map.. starting with the regular reflection map from GP4 as a base.. and trying different effects until a chrome almost mirror type effect was accomplished.

When I get some spare time in the next few days I might try this out. I won't be able to change the uvw mapping of the model so any extra reflection effect would be on the red parts also. But then the modeller could change the uvw mapping if he liked the effect.

Just an idea.

I had another idea.. In photoshop.. in the channel that has the grey and red parts..

Use some photoshop tricks to make the grey look like this on the texture..



There are lots of chrome tutorials on the web for chrome effect. It might be a challenge to get it looking realistic but maybe could be really good.

Would look too static imo...

I don´t know if this one is helping:



It´s a fictional Alfa Romeo Bacardi Team made by Locust.

I don´t know anything about carpainting or shaping. Only want to help you making a cool chrome effect. So i thought this one could help you.
You can download it here for example: [www.m4driving.it]

oh yes, that looks much more like chrome.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

Alfa Romeo?! What has it to do with Alfa Romeo?!

it's got nothing to do with Alfa Romeo, but there is a fictional Alfa Romeo car that is chrome, so he posted it here with a download link so we can find out how the chrome effect was made.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

Like Colombo right. And from that we will know who the killer is. Anyway good luck!

right, i opened the tex file and had a look, the tex is a mixture of shades of grey, and the alpha is fully white:





seems to give quite a good chrome effect i think.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2006 10:51PM by Muks_C.

Very interresting.

And many thanks to all. It seems that a lot of people
want this MP4/21 with his chrome effect.

Have a good night

GeZeRe

Yep to get this chrome effect really well done it will need to be drawn alot of it in photoshop. Using different shades of whites and greys. What makes chrome look like chrome isn't the colours it has, but the way it looks when it darkens. It's hard to explain but that skin shows it well. If you look at a bright part of chrome it's just 255 255 255 rgb. Plain white. But how it blends with the dark parts makes it look like chrome.

If I was going to make the skin. I'd take photos from the car and scale them to the size of the texture parts. And then draw those shades of greys in the same parts as the real car. And then take the time to blend them properly (not with blur) so that it looks like "chrome". If it doesn't look like chrome when it's just a skin in photoshop it won't look 100% like chrome in the game imo and more just a car that is light or dark grey.

That would be alot of work obviously! Good luck if anyone ever tries it.

It would look static on it's own, but with the lighting over the top ingame it would blend more. The opactiy level of the chrome shading could be faded and tweaked if need be.

The other thing is the lighting effect ingame. If you have the same lighting effect for the red parts as you do the chrome parts.. It won't be right. I don't know if this is possible in gp4 to have two different textures, one with carlightmap on and the other without. You'll notice in the other mp421 topic the chrome looks good but the red is too pale because it has the same glossyness as the chrome.

With these two things (texture effect and lighting), I think it would be close as possible to real thing given the game engine. I have done some tests as this challenge is quite fun But nothing yet to show for progress. Without committing hours and hours to making it look right.

It's also a real challenge to get the lighting looking perfect for both track cameras, and for onboard or cockpit view. If it looks good in tv track cameras it will be too dark in onboard view. We will see once the season starts but my guess is that from onboard tv view on a sunny day the top surfaces of the car will be yellowish silver, reflecting the sun.

well , GP4 doesn't support normals map and shader model , so a perfect mirror reflection is impossible , all we can do on chorme effect is to make it a darkercolor and strong reflection , and , what's the most important , it must look like a chorme when the car is "MOVING" , not in pictures!

A Racing and Rail fan.

Yeah true.

I think Teraur did a great job and needs to be congratulated. After seeing his car, this topic a bit pointless now. Given the capabilites of the game itself I think he did the best any of us could do.