Retroreflector texture (Reflecting area)

[stalkarn 10]

Hi,

I'm trying to make a texture for an emergency vehicle. On the side I want to have some retroreflector areas that will reflect light at night like a real police car (swedish) for example. Is it posible to do this for arma 3?

Like on this picture for example:

[Barotall 10]

I think so i have seen some community's do it i think it has to be a .rvmat to does the whole refection but i'm not really sure.. try messing a bit with the .rvmats and see if u can get one to do it that's really the best thing i could say.

[warlord554 2065]

Mess around with the emmisive and specular values in your rvmat until you get the desired look. The trickest part is you have to highlight the exact faces you want to reflect, and only apply the custom rvmat to them. I would model the reflector "trim" separate, and float it right on top of the model faces, that way its separate, smooth/streamline, and easy to apply texs/rvmats. It will be tricky to get a reflector look, and keep it from "glowing". But play around with your values and see what happens. Also will help if your actual diffuse map is as close to those bright colors as possible, and create your specular(smdi) map correctly

[stalkarn 10]

Hey, and thanks for the reply!

So if I understand correctly I should edit the model of the object (e.g. SUV) to have an area I want to apply reflection on, on top of the actual vehicle model?

If that is the case there is a problem that I can't edit a BI model and also this means that people that want to play on the server need to download a custom model if I'm correct.

Also, when I look at the rvmat file for SUV I can see that it doesn't have many things to edit and it looks like I can't edit a specific area on the SUV. Maybe I'm just lost.

Edited November 12, 2014 by Stalkarn

[warlord554 2065]

which suv? the A2 sample? lemme see if I can explain better. You could tex a strip down the side, no problem. But, Rvmats can only be applied to whole faces. not part of them, so if your strip tex overlaps faces, then the rvmat will reflect not only the part you want, but every face connected to it

Make sense?

Check out this pic

Lets say I wanted to add reflect to the patch on the side of the helmet (red arrow). You see bits of the faces sticking out past it (green arrows), they would also reflect. Now if I just kept the patch piece of the model separate, and floated it, then only it would reflect

Edited November 12, 2014 by WarLord554

[stalkarn 10]

Yes it makes sense :) I have played in blender abit so I'm familiar with faces. Its a SUV in Arma 3 I wanted to retexture to look like an ambulance and wanted the fancy effect of having reflection on some areas as a real one usualy have.