The first thing I'd recommend doing for this is going to http://www.animax.it (the best texture site out there, in my opinion) and downloading a cool looking marble texture.
Now that you've done that, we'll create a nice quick test object. Make a Plane with 1 length and 1 width segment, 150x150 units.
Hit M to bring up the Material Editor.
Now, you'll see the first material sphere highlighted. The current material type is listed as Standard. That's not what we want. Click on Standard (on the right just below the material spheres) and choose Raytrace. Raytrace materials allow you to have much more control over your materials and look much better for reflections and refractions.
First check Supersample. That's so the bump map we'll be using doesn't look choppy.
Scroll down and click the Maps rollout.
In the Diffuse slot, click where it says None. In the box that pops up, click Bitmap. Now choose that nice marble texture you downloaded.
Hit Go To Parent (to the right, just beneath the material spheres) to view the Maps rollout again.
Now you need a good bump map for tiles . . . I'll happily supply one I use myself.
In the Bump slot, click where it says None, select Bitmap, and now select the Bump map JPG file I've provided.
Now, we want to change the tiling for this texture, so it's smaller and fits in as squares with the rather large, rectangular Diffuse Map of marble that we have. To do that, first go back up into the Maps rollout and change the bump amount to 225 so we can actually see where the bump is clearly.
Click on the Bump slot to go back into the bitmap properties now.
Under the Tiling heading, change the U coordinate to 5 and the V coordinate to 5. You should be able to see the nice tiled squares on your texture.
Click Go To Parent again to go back to the Maps rollout.
Click the Raytracer Controls rollout and uncheck Raytrace Refractions. Since the floor isn't like a diamond -- it doesn't change the Index of Refraction to the human eye, raytracing refractions would just be a waste of rendering time.
Up the glossiness to 65.
Now go back to the Raytrace Basic Parameters rollout. We need to add some subtle reflection to this floor.
Click the color swatch next to Reflect. Change the color to a dark gray. My value is 57. To see your reflections on the objects, click the checkerbox icon to the right of the material spheres.
Create a test object (I used a teapot with a white color) on the plane so you can see it reflect on the floor.
And that's pretty much it . . . if you want to continue, then read on. I will be adding lights to see the gloss and reflections some more and I will be changing the output levels of the marble texture so it has less contrast and is darker.
First off, lights . . . I'll just post another thing I've written for them here. These are the kind of lights I'll be using:
1. Create an Omni Light.
2. Go to the Modify Panel.
3. Change your light's color to whatever you want it... Normal lights are usually close to white with a touch of yellow or orange.
4. Check Cast Shadows.
5. Up the Multiplier to 3.0.
6. Scroll down to view the Attenuation Parameters.
7. Modify the parameters to these the values:
a) Near Attenuation: Start [0.0] End [10.0]
B) Far Attenuation: Start [40.0 End [200.0]
c) Decay: Type [Inverse Square] Start [20.0]
d) Check "Use" under both Near and Far attenuation.
8. Scroll down to view the Shadow Parameters.
9. Change Shadow Map to Raytraced Shadows.
10. Depending on how dark you want your shadows, click the swatch next to "Color" and make it brighter or darker.
Tips: These are the settings I used based on how bright my textures normally are and the size of my models (walls are typically 30 units high).
Modify them however you want to get the right effect.
To get a really, REALLY bright glow on a wall, just put the light close to it. If you want the light to be more diffuse, move it so that the green safety-sphere-thing is slightly away from the surface.
Anything within the green safety sphere will be pretty bright. If you want the glow to be less intense, lower the multiplier.
Feel free to modify whatever you like... play with the parameters to see what the differences are.
Station three lights around the test object. One should cast shadows and have the highest multiplier (for example, 1.0). The other two should not cast shadows. Make one have a multiplier of .6 and the other .6. Make sure you place them close enough to the test object to light it.
Bring up the material editor again and make sure you have the floor's material sphere highlighted.
Click in the Diffuse slot again to go into the bitmap parameters.
Scroll down and click the Output rollout.
Check Enable Color Map.
To make the bitmap darker and keep the contrast, you simply move the two points down a little bit. To do that, select the Move gadget to the upper left of the output curve.
To lessen the contrast, click the Add Point gadget, then click somewhere on the curve.
Click the Move gadget again, and move this new point around to see how it changes the contrast. If you want to see just the original texture change, look to the bottom right of the material spheres and click Show End Result. Now you can see the texture you're working on plainly.
And that's the end of that. Questions? Comments? Anyone have anything to add?
