Shiny floors

Can someone tell me how all these high shine floors I've been seeing lately are made?

It's using the slightest transparency on the floor texture and extending your wall/cubical etc past the floor level.

I have seem some places doing this and actually have a complete second build upside down under the main build to give the shiny effect.(it looks really nice if you have the prims to spare)

Noooooooo she wants to look up her own skirt

Honeybear... I've seen these floors as well and really desire to learn the technique... not sure I quite understand Theo's reply.... can anyone expand on this??

I understand the principle of a slight transparency in the floor and then recreate the wall upside down beneath the floor... but I've seen some that I would swear are not done that way... whenever I see this... I click and edit to try and determine how it was done and I believe there's a simpler technique out there that would require less prim.

Such an incredible effect please help

the "reflection" is actually an identical object under the floor, and the floor is slightly transparent so you can see this object... If you want an example, go to GuRL6 and move your cam under the floor in the centre of the main room.

Two ways. One has already been said.

1st way - Recreate a basic scene, upside down, under the floor, and make the floor slightly transparent. Rather prim costly, but looks wonderful. As well as Gurl6, the castle at Avilion Grove uses this technique.

A second, less '3d' way, would be to use a texture that looks like the scene above it. Could be done, though would be very hard to get one working for any and all angle.

If you're only going to have people in certain areas, then views can be predicted, and you can texture to make it work.

Possibly could also se the 'alpha sorting' glitch to your advantage. If you can figure out which shows at specific angles, you could use two 'floors' textured for two different angles, and the flicker would be used to show the correct one.

Kinda fun to try I'd think.

you can simplify the underfloor type builds, square out the mirrored prims, use textures to fake extra prims... you can do a similar trick with pictures, layering them in at different depths to help create a more realistic scene (Luskwwod Creature Creations uses this effect in their vendors with good results)

hm. OK, since neither of these two methods make any sense to me...I'm going to assume it's more advanced than my building skills and just drool over other people's pretty floors.

Thanks all

the prim saving is a matter of trading detail for accuracy, but the basic idea is actually easy

build your room as normal, then build it again underneath the floor.

for the picture mirroring you need a narrow viewing angle (like a hallway end wall or a cubicle), build it as normal, then cam around so that you're looking out from the surface you want to mirror, take a pic, then plaster it on (or behind) your 'mirrored' surface.

picture layering sounds complicated, but if you look at those vendors I mentioned you'll see it's pretty simple...

looking at how others did it can help alot (especially underneath/behind)

Thanks Void

They do look cool, but they should be used sparingly.

Firstly, you have to nearly double your prim count to show accurate reflections. And secondly, any avatar or attachment that uses alpha channels will be completely fubared.

For specific bits of floors or objects, alpha reflection can be cool...but for large floor spaces, the cons outweigh the pros.

Id love to try this!! But how is it possible if you wanted to do this to your house or a room in the house? Would you have to raise your house up in order to build the entire profect underneath it upside down under the transparent floor??!!

if it's a ground build you could lower the ground under the room to give you the space you need, sky builds it wouldn't matter unless the underside of the floor was visible.

I'll agree with micheal about the avtar transparency issue, but disagree on the point of prim cost. most structural walls can be extended below the floors removing a large protion of the prim cost, wall vendors, portraits, etc can be mimic'd with textures, and most other things like tables and chairs can be simplified shapes with baked textures, all for ~+1/4 - 1/3 or your original prim cost... although it does take more time and effort, and not a little skill with texture making

yea there's nothing complex about the technique Honie..simply double evreything in the room and flip it...then attach it underneath.

~Lana Tomba

P.S. Don't forget to flip all your textures on the doubled pieces below horizontally...or is it vertically?...up and down