how to make a mirror

[LordNausea]

I wanted to add a mirror to one of my maps because it would look cool.

So I read one of the mirror tuts, but even after a lot of trial'n'error it won't work.

This is what I did:

I put a brush onto a wall, gave it the mirror1 texture out of the common set. Then I put the entity misc_portal_surface 8 units from the surface of the brush into the map. At last I built a border around my mirror brush. According do the tutorial it whould work, but it does not.

 

Anybody got that problem already?

[Tantalus]

In some of the other q3 engines, mirrors could be tricky. Even though you do everything right, sometimes they just don't like where they're sitting. I haven't tried mirrors yet with JK2, but I'd first suggest moving the mirror around your map to see if it works in different positions. If not, try e-mailing raven, because I don't remember any mirrors in the single player campaign, so it would be something we have no frame of reference for.

[Mr. Nip]

There are mirrors in the game - one near the very very end, in the middle of a hallway. Perhaps there are also others I missed. In any case, they're certainly possible.

[LordNausea]

I tried to move the mirror to another location, but it does not work on any of the six sides of my testing room.

I also rebuilt the whole room but it won't work.

So I guess there is a little modificaiton to do in one of the steps to get it working, but I got no idea what to do.

[Tantalus]

What exactly does show up on the mirror surface in the game? Does it act like a funhouse mirror, and only reflects from weird angles?

[LordNausea]

The place where the mirror should be is black and there are white lines on it. The mirror reflects from no angle. It's just this ugly texture on the wall and nothing more

[Tenakalaz]

I have the same problem, the mirror just won't work, I have used the portal surface in the right place and also tried 3 different mirror shaders but I just get the shader grid defaults when I compile it.

[ArmchairAthlete]

If not, try e-mailing raven, because I don't remember any mirrors in the single player campaign

 

 

*** POSIBLE MINOR SPOILER ***

 

Remember when the three Desann's walked off near the end? The path straight forward led to one where another Kyle was in a mirror with a Desann that walked off behind him. This was a dead end, but I believe it was a mirror. The image did everything you did, and the hallway was mirrored.

[Pid]

I agree. And with simple shadows on, you could see the shadow of Desann in behind you even when he runs away (you know when you only see him in the mirror - that was the most scariest part of the game, fraked me out!)

 

Also what do you think of this...

 

This is a screenshot released by Raven/LucasArts before the game was released:

 

http://www.geocities.com/pidman101/reflection.jpg

 

 

Also here is the actual mirror near the end of the game:

 

http://www.geocities.com/pidman101/reflection2.jpg

 

Please c&p all links into a browser.

[LordNausea]

I am absolutely happy. Finally I got my mirror working. I don't know what I did wrong, but I got an answer from Raven and I just set the mirror up as written in the mail and it works.

Reading that some other ppl are having problems to get their mirrors working I'll just paste the mail:

 

-------------------

Set up the mirror just as you normally would in Q3...

 

1. Make sure the mirrored surface has a qer_mirror (or portal) surface

property (we had one in the game called mirror_floor2 in our

textures...)

 

2. Put a misc_portal_surface entity above the surface (around 16-32

units away is fine)

 

3. Make sure the surface is the only mirror the entity can see (it

doesn't like seeing more than one mirror at a time)

 

4. Make sure the surface to be a mirror is made of only one brush for

best results...

 

(our mirror texture has the following setup in the shader:

 

textures/tests/mirror_floor2

{

qer_editorimage textures/tests/qer_mirror.tga

surfaceparm forcefield

portal

q3map_nolightmap

{

map textures/tests/qer_mirror2b

blendFunc GL_ONE GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA

depthWrite

}

{

map textures/tests/floor02_alphab

blendFunc GL_DST_COLOR GL_SRC_COLOR

}

{

map textures/kejim/env_newfloor_kej

blendFunc GL_ONE GL_ONE

rgbGen const ( 0.200000 0.200000 0.200000 )

tcGen environment

}

}

 

The forcefield parameter makes shots bounce off of it

 

The portal parameter makes it show a reflection

 

the other texture (tests/floor02_alphab) used on it gives it a texture to

show (with an alpha value), just remove this if you want a true mirror...

 

and the last texture in the setup gave it a shiny environment map like a

piece of glass...

-------------------

 

As already written, I don't know what was wrong with my first setupsd, but I think it was the wrong mirror shader. Now it works just fine.

[RichDiesal]

The only way I could get it to work is by using the mirror_yavin shader... never could get mirror1 to work.

 

Also make sure that the room you want mirrored is reasonably big or else the mirror will act very strange (sometimes it just doesn't show up).