Detail textures and mirrors

[GenericNPC]

I don't know if everyone in this forum already knows this, and I'm just an Unreal noob, but here we go:

I was randomly (well, sort of) changing things in my UT .ini file, looking for the best visual appearance, when I noticed some strange glitch with the mirrors. I made a simple map to show you how a mirror is rendered in my UT, with the .ini file unchanged:

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/5885/shot0000qor.jpg

And then, after tweaking some values, the mirror looked  identical from a distance, but when I approached it...

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/416/shot0001tgt.jpg

When you get near a mirror the reflection disappears, and all you can see is this... white thing 'spreading' on the surface the closer you are. First it is a texture, then just snow white (man, thank god I took some screenshots, because it's hard to explain).

So I decided to revert to the original .ini file and start changing values, one at a time, and loading the map after. Finally, I discovered the "DetailTextures" variable, when set to "True", was the reason of the glitch. Any ideas why?

[[§Ŕ] ŤhěxĐâŕkśîđěŕ]

The detail textures are textures that go "over" the actual textures, obviously, giving it more detail. That's basically what they look like, they are in greyscale (just like decal textures). Open Detail.utx (or w/e) in editor to see what I'm talking about if you don't get it. That bug doesn't exist in U1 afaik. If I am correct, it happens when the engine wants to render those detail textures over the mirror (the reason that happens only when you're close is that because detail textures appear only when you're close, if they appear from far they wouldn't be noticeable so meh) and mirrors can do funky things in UE1. A solution would be to find a fix (if it exists, idk) or disable detail textures (they are not very noticeable anyway).

[GenericNPC]

Thanks for the explanation. Yes, you can achieve very weird things playing with mirrors in UnrealED. But I didn't thought the engine would try to draw a detail texture over a mirror surface. There's no point to do that...

But thanks anyway.

[DieHard SCWS]

It probably depends on what texture is used. You can pretty much use any texture that lacks detail to create a mirror. But obviously you should never use e texture that has a detail texture asigned to it. And i didnt check, but i asume that all glass like textures wont have a detail texture asigned, so the problem cant occur. Well, at least i may hope so lol.


And from the looks of it, the texture you used, makes use of the Detail.Dirty texture.
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[GenericNPC]

That's a good idea. It would seem logic to deactivate detail textures for a surface checked as "mirror". But I see it's not the case. So I'll just have to assign glass textures to my mirrors. Maybe it's how Epic mappers did it, because this only happened in my levels, not in the single player campaign of UT.

[DieHard SCWS]

And if you want to give it a "dirty" look you could also try clouds, and i asume that those wont have a Detail texture either. Again, i at least may hope so lol.

But yeah simply check if the texture has a Detail assigned, if not use it, if yes, choose a different texture that lacks it.


And of course dont alter the texture itself because that will cause a mismatch !
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