Tom Hall

, a question was asked “How might I recreate this glassy texture?” with this neat gif being cited as an example.

As always with these incredibly active Facebook groups, Estevan Carlos Benson -- the person who posted the question -- had several answers to go off and investigate in Jitter in less than half an hour. Now that’s fast turn-around!

The answer being an environment_texture into jit.gl.material or if using cubes, jit.gl.cube with custom cube map. (There’s a lot of them to be found in a google search.)

There’s a lot more that can be done with shape changes and morphing, different textures, and lights and backgrounds. I’ll leave it to you to make it your own.

I have gone ahead and put together a basic example patch to get you started, that shows how to go about it.

Recently, in the Jitter (C74) Facebook Group, a question was asked “How might I recreate this glassy texture?” with this neat gif being cited as an example.

mirror-mirror-creating-a-glassy-texture

@brendan Nope , what I see in the patch that Tom shared , all can be done in Max6.

@Tom Hall: did you use the same patch for the 1st example which demonstrates light reflection on the floor. Very slick

@brendan Nope , what I see in the patch that Tom shared , all can be done in Max6.
@Tom Hall: did you use the same patch for the 1st example which demonstrates light reflection on the floor. Very slick 

@brendan - @phiol is correct, the only thing it includes that you can't do in Max6 is load very specific light settings via an included snapshot - you can set these manually in the patch.

This is great. Learned some new useful stuff about jitter.

Had a problem getting it to open in Max. I have some of my own stand-alones as well as some from Essl. This opened in them. Changed the extension to .zip and bingo.

Gave me additional insight into jit.world.

This is great.  Learned some new useful stuff about jitter.

Had a problem getting it to open in Max.  I have some of my own stand-alones as well as some from Essl. This opened in them. Changed the extension to .zip and bingo.
Gave me additional insight into jit.world.
Thanks so much for this.


The trick to getting a really awesome finish is 90% in the lights. Here is a snapshot of another variation on the lights with reflections onto the ground surface below the shape.

Load the new snapshot into /Documents/Max7/Snapshots [folder]

Also try adding the jit.gl.pass default help patch to this patch to add depth-of-field

And what about the reflection in the reflection? kaleidoscope effect. If the model has a plane aimed at each other and reflecting other

Thank you.
And what about the reflection in the reflection? kaleidoscope effect. If the model has a plane aimed at each other and reflecting other


Tom, I found by just using a video of the room I was in, as the material for a gl object, I got a great glassy effect. I agree with you though, lighting is everything. I just posted a quick vid on youtube in response to your piece here, showing what I did for a live music performance using jitter and gl objects. The video is called, MAX Intermediate EPS 02.

From my understanding this is just an object with the same texture applied unto it as the environment. So just an effect, not a real mirror simulation. For example if I put a shere in front of the cube, I will not see the sphere reflected. Right?

ya, (was thinking about this myself when i saw this from the facebook group), i'm pretty sure you're correct: unless you animated the environment map to show the reflected object at the exact proper positions, but that may be more trouble than its worth, and more complex things like having objects show 'reflections within reflections' i think would require 'raytracing' implemented within a shader(i've been thinking about 'raytracing' for years now and still i've not worked hard enough on learning to implement..so many things to learn 😭).

I will not see the sphere reflected. Right?

Mirror Mirror: Creating a Glassy Texture