Problem with 'Bump Cube Add Alpha Reflect T1'

blakboks

I'm trying to create some windows using 'Bump Cube Add Alpha Reflect T1', but it doesn't seem to be reflecting anything (actually, when I first tried, the entire texture was reflective). I'm obviously missing something, but I can't really figure out what...

My texture is a 32-bit .tga, with the diffuse window texture in the RGB channels and my alpha channel is white where I want it to be reflective, and black where I don't want it reflective (I've tried it inverted as well, to the same results).

I'm able to get 'Bump Cube Add Color Reflect T1 T2' to work perfectly (with the 'reflect map' as a 24-bit .tga), but for some reason it just doesn't work when I try to use my 'reflect map' from an alpha channel (either the alpha from T1 in 'Bump Cube Add Alpha Reflect T1', or in the alpha from T2 in 'Bump Cube Add Alpha Reflect T1 T2'). I'd really much rather use the alpha channel for optimization's sake.

Anyone experience similar issues? Any tips for creating (non-transparent) window materials in general?

Thanks in advance, everyone!
 
If using max, check to see if you have data for that particular map channel. If not copy over.
 
Hmmm...I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Do you mean the alpha of the .tga itself? If so, then, yes, I'm certain I have info in that channel. Otherwise, in the shader ('Bump Cube Add Alpha Reflect T1'), I only see three texture stages, the first being the diffuse texture itself (with alpha), the second being the normal map, and the third the cube map.

I suppose I can just use 'Bump Cube Add Color Reflect T1 T2', but use an 8-bit grayscale .tga for T2 and it works out to the same amount of textures in memory. I just imagine it might use an extra texture sampling call in the shader itself, though (don't know for sure, haven't really looked under the hood--probably wouldn't know what I was looking at even if I did).

How I wish we had a UDK/Softimage/Maya/Houdini-like shading network to use instead of these hard-coded shaders. It's so much more artist-friendly. Ahh well...
 
In max Tools>Channel info (on selected object), With Bump Cube Add Alpha Reflect T1, your mapping will be located in channels in 1 to 4. If any of those are missing I've seen it cause odd issues with alpha.

What are your Source and Destination Blends set to?
Try
Src Alpha, Inv Src Alpha respectively.
 
I have the same problem in a way, with the Bump Cube T1 shader.

There is a:

- Color map, with an alpha channel
- Normal map, with an alpha channel
- Cubemap from Joesville as a fallback map, using STATIC01 static reflector.

Now, all maps should just use the same uv channel, have no use for multiple ones as I've read in some cases. Also, my blend
mode is set to 1 and 0, since I tried to set it to src alpha and inv src alpha, and that made the alpha channel work as a mask
so everything which shouldn't be reflective, wasn't visible anymore :p

What is also weird, that even on a 50% blend for the cubemap, I can't see anything from my color map, color wise. It's all the same shade, as if the cubemap is on a 100% blend despite what I have set in the material editor. It seems the only thing that is working correctly is the normal map.

So I'm missing something, but not sure what.

edit:
oh snap, didn't realise this topic is in the rF1 while using the search, my question involves rF2..
 
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