Glossy sphere texturing?

I have been trying all night (much to the detriment of my L$ bank account >.< to get a texture created that I can apply to a sphere that will give it the appearance of being a high gloss metal. I am trying to make some armor and I don't want any actual texture on the surface of it, I just want it to look like it's glossed over plastic, or metal. The problem is getting it to look good (not to simplistic) and have it align on a sphere at the same time. I did some skin work for this set and it was easy because what I drew translated almost directly to the character model. Anyway, this is kind of long winded, here is a pic of sort of the look I am looking for, it seems to me that without any actual simulated texture complex prim models look flat, anyone know a way around this?

http://www.tokyo2040.com/gallery/designs/images/mecha-main-color-021.jpg

Anyway, sorry if the post did not make a heckuva lot of sense, feel free to IM me in game if you see me on, I would love to chat texturing with someone who knows more than me (which wont take much) =P

oh, here are two quick screenies of the stuff i'm trying to texture as well, I got the undersuit (skin) done, but now i'm stuck, and frustrated =/

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8789/lucidarmor12ff.jpg
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/9332/lucidarmor26um.jpg

--Lucient Sieyes

Why dont you just use shiny?
This is a feature built into SL. You can make anything shiny. Just go to your preferences and enable it.

I am including a Texture I made in Photoshop, its a colour Background with a White Point
that is the Highlight.
U might want to experiment with a smaller Point, stronger Point or even a different colour - Usually a Highlight should be the same colour but lighter for example green - lightgreen Highlight.

Good Luck Vindi

Hmm, I am not a fan of the shiney feature, i've never been able to see any shineyness unless I was under actual direct lighting. I tried creating a highlight like that, but applying it to a sphere made it really distorted looking, is there a way around that? I appreciate all the help!

--Lucient

All you need to do is figure out where you want the highlight on the Prims, and draw the texture so it's there, just like you did for the AV (but then, you knew that. )

The prims are all UV Mapped, just like the AV is, and the distortions are very predictable. To learn more, I suggest that you visit my in-world texture tuts. You'll find them at Benten 18,99. Or Find me (Robin Sojourner) and look in my Picks for a landmark and teleport.

I think you might find them helpful.

(Good model, by the way. This is going to look great when it's done! )

The shape of your armour looks great so far Lucient.

Trying to get the cartoony shiny effect youre after is very difficult... it almost always tends to look too flat.

I made this shiny metal texture specifically for spheres... I rendered it from 3dsmax. Feel free to save it, tint it as you need, and upload it (that goes for anybody ).

Nothing you can do with fixed textures will ever look as good as a proper reflection map (I hope LL add user reflection maps sometime!) but this texture is about as good as I've managed to get for a fixed texture.

HTH

I'll get round to making similar textures for toruses and rings & cones sometime.

Awesome, I apprecaite the replies and compliments =) I'm going to script weapons, and shields into the armor, and make completly new animations (lots of work, but i'm hoping it's cool when i'm done =) ) I'll definatly check out your inworld tutorials, I think I could use all the help I can get hehe.

--Lucient Sieyes

Once you're finished with that hardsuit, will you be selling it?

Because I want one.

Especially when I figure out how to make an avatar after Sylvia Stingray.

Lucient,

Im not a builder of anything other than basic houses but I have learnt a bit by my customers custom requests...

I have some high shine ( with a point of shine if u know what I mean) textures, they are actually intended as sphere shine textures...to create a shiney round sphere with a point of shine & reflection.

I would gladly get them to you for the fee of the upload?

Or just mail them to you.
I have silver bronze (mottled) and gold some other blue & green shine they are only tiny textures intended for poser creations i believe so 64 X 64 let me know anyway IM me.

LillyB

Your post comes at a great time, Robin. I've been working on several builds with top-sized boxes, and your extensive work on creating properly skewed textures for them will save me a ton of experimentation. Thank you for the time and care you've put into your tutorials; I learned a lot reading them. I highly recommend them to anyone interested in the details of texturing in SL, or indeed, any 3D environment.

I'm debating selling it, I might make some special order ones, if you want Sylia I can prolly redesign it and color it approiatly =P I don't expect to have it done for another week or two though, i'm pretty busy recently =(

this is of course assuming I figure out how texture it to my satisfaction =P i'm picky lol, i'm working on it though, Robins texture maps and tutorials have been SUPER helpfull, oh and the model has undergone a few changes, especially in the shape of the shoulders if you want to see it in game we can arrange a meeting or something i'm sure.

Thanks, Chandra and Lucient!

I'm glad that you found the tutorials helpful.

I had fun (and learned a lot) doing them, but it means even more to me that they help others.