Here's a small detail that I just tried out (Looks sort of okay, maybe someone wants to experiment with it).

Get a model (of something metal, like a colt), make a duplicate of the body, Milkshape Fatboy it (a tiny bit, only so that the copy is SLIGHTLY bigger than the original) assign a chrome texture to it. When you compile it, make the chrome texture have an additive rendermode. What happens?

The chrome texture makes the thing look... chromey, and the additive texture makes the chromey part look semi-transparent. What you've effectively (or uneffectively) created is a model with a sheen.

Any thoughts, ideas, or comments? Post them here, old sport.

http://pages.prodigy.net/dukelee13/test.gif

Here's a look at a test model I made using Devin's Colt. I won't release it or junk (and at about 4000 polys, I don't think you'd want it, just for that little sheen). Maybe it'd be more reasonable for knives or something.

Once again, another neat thing for the community to tinker with. Looks pretty danged cool :D

That is kinda nifty.

The poly-count could be reduced by making the chromed bit not be as detailed as the solid bit, obviously.

the half-life engine's "chrome" has always sucked the sweat off a dead man's balls.

Originally posted by Podunkian
old sport
Do you think your Gatsby or somthing?

Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me.

oo i d love a shiny new chrome knife

especially if the skin model is RDK-Poly knife

Could you post your chrome texture? Mine just...blows.

That's amazing! Great job figuring this out. Now...to get the poly count down.

It would be most useful on knives though, since most of the metal guns aren't brand new in battle :D, but still it's great and I'm sure tons of people would love this...myself included!

couldnt you use the default model for the chrome part since they are the same shape?

it would greatly reduce the polies

Trust me, you don't want my chrome, it's just a black BMP with bits of dark grey and a tiny bit of light gray sprayed randomly on it. Because it's additive rendering, the black turns completely transparent and the grey turns semi-transparent; just the effect we're looking for, eh, old sport?

And about using default models, that wouldn't work terribly well because some parts of the model wouldn't match up. Even with it propertly done and you've got a TINY outline on the model because the sheen is seperate from the model itself and in order to make it visible you've gotta stick it out a TINY bit.

but...couldt we use the same model that we want the chrome on but we delete the inner faces that we don't see??

that could reduce the polycount.

That looks awesome

thats pretty cool looking.. I'll have to play around with that

Yes, Sinister, that would work.

omg that is very purdy!
btw, have u released ur head shot animation thingies yet ? i think i may have missed the post.
gj

cool idea Podunkian.. I love when experimentation leads to interesting results... Especially because it sparks the rest of this community to pool together ideas on how to improve on it more...

GG...


...

Would this work on all models? Including player?

I tried this as well, but i never got it to look quite right. I tried making ym Sniper lense all shiny this way, but it never looked....shiny. It just changed shades of grey every now and then.

ANd my K43 looked like **** when I tried this.

Probably because the model wasn't animated. For some reason the chrome in half-life doesn't change how it looks until it plays an animation or something like that.

Hmmm....let's just say it doesn't look good on really high poly models. The chrome goes nuts.

This'll look good on the Brit revolver.

Well I applied it well here...took about 9 different tries on different guns D:
http://forums.firearmsmod.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46849

this is cool.

I can see this being useful for glass effects, like lenses or scopes. Or maybe for a knife, but I doubt a combat knife would be that shiny, it'd attract a lot of unwanted attention.

Good work, could someone make this for scope lenses? we could also use this for maps, you could make glass models and we could insert them into the map and put a func_wall over it thats transparent and blocks players, would look amazing in maps, but dod isnt much of a shiny mod, war is not shiny :p

lets think of other ways to use this...

Not quite, the chrome doesn't 'change' unless the model itself is animating.

jesus how do you figure these thigns out??

Originally posted by Russ. Conscript
jesus how do you figure these thigns out??

I think it's called a brain ( Mass of nerve tissue in the head) Russ........lol

Soz dude just had to say it........JK of cause.

Awesome! Anyone want to Chrome the Sniper Scopes for a Reflect Effect? ^_^

if you learn how a chrome map is mapped onto the model, you might be able to control it somehow and thus using it as a 'ghetto' specular map rather then just the normal chrome. and thus making the shininess a lot more realistic since you control where it has highlights and shines.

a very cool thing you thought up btw.