Simple, fast, "shiny metal" shader?

Hello.

Iam very new to 3DGS, however Iam learning quickly. Not too great code-wise, but generally.

Anyways, Im great at modeling, and Im making this awsome guy in an armored suit, but he looks rather plain right now - not very metal like.
Ive been looking into shaders, and I get thier basic function: change the look of somthing in realtime.

Im looking for the the most simple, fast, yet great looking shader that will create some nice "shiny metal" for my armor, and 1. wont eat CPU, and 2. looks great and easy to use.

Ive looked/searched for this kinda thing, but Im so new I wouldnt have known if I found it. ...found a nice fur shader, though. Will DEFINANTLY use that.

Thnx.

P.S. A nice first person shooter tutorial would be nice, too.

well the fur shader is slooooo, as far as a metal shader you could use a normal mapping shader, there is one on the wiki

OH! I forgot to say, but I want one that doesnt need a pixel shader for the graphics card..seeing as how mine doesnt have one. Just to let you know.

oh, well a shader does need one, thats what a pixel shader is, there is nothing you can really do about that.

Er...well..Ive seen pretty nice looking effects like the chrome shine in games like Need For Speed, and they run PERFECT on my comp. Thats really all I want: a "shine" to go over my metal texture, not really to make it look all realistic like this:

But like this:

See how its reflects a nice white shine? What I want doesnt even have to react to the in-game lighting (except maybe dissapear in the dark), but just give metal depth. You know?

I know of the "metallic" flag you can turn on for an object, but that looks rather blan.

Anything?

The NFS game in the screenshot looks like it must be using somesort of shader, either environment mapping or render to texture.

yeah, if cars in need for speed look like that one your pc, then your computer supports shaders, what videocard does your computer have

It has the GeForce 4 MX 440. However I always read online, and when I try to run high-end games that it doesnt have one.

hmmmmm I know mx series doesnt..... on the front of the car bumper, is that a reflection or is that part of the actual texture, because if that is part of the the texture than they are probably just using something similar to a normal material. shaders wont work on you videocard at all, the fur shader wont either.

The white part in between the top and bottom opening on the bumber is I believe part of the texture..OR it could be the shine. But the best example of it is on the hood.

Whats really odd, is I was able to play the Prey demo....BEARLLY, but it worked!

yeah, i know i used to have a non shader card that could play far cry, but every thing was just rendered all messed up like the terrain was ice blue, if you want to know how to do this just look up materials, and and look for settings like specular power and ambient, tweak them, and you should be able to get the effect you want, but it isnt a shader that that is using

I think it´s just environment mapping. You can do that with FFP.
http://www.coniserver.net/wiki/index.php/Cubic_Enviroment_Shading_Shader

Is't there a flag metal=on that should do that?

Speaking of which I never got that to work anyone know how to use it?

Yes you can do cubic environment mapping in the fixed function...

That metal flag is an old flag, no longer used I think..

Well, Im able to use the metalic flag, but like I said, its blan. Really all it does, from what Ive seen, is make it look like its trying to look like metal, but not shiny in anyway. Kinda hard to describe..

But what you guys mention is very helpful. I will try the code in the link as soon as I have the time today, and see if I cant get it to work.

Thnx.

well i dont think that card can even use ffp, i think the "environment map" is actually part of the texture.

even gf2 mx400 supported environment mapping

oh, well maybe then. hmmm

I have a pc with a Geforce2MX and NFS underground works fine on almost full settings, shaders and all.

Geforce2MX cannot run HLSL or ASM shaders. But it can run fixed function effects. And you can create multi-texturing (several textures at terrain), dot3-bump-mapping and cubic environment mapping with FFP.