Ziemanskye on 17/11/2005 at 10:47
First. str8g8, what you're thinking off is probably the specular mask.
Maybe not the technical arty term for it, but our surfaces don't seem to shine naturally the way a Blinn or whatever would, so we need the specular to make it shine at all, then the mask to stop bits of it doing so.
Does seem a little weird that you can't use a non-cubemap for a specular (so it stays put like the city windows outside UT2k4s penthouse/art-gallery map).
Thinking on it, that's probably more what you're thinking off...
And ascottk, does that also work when it has both the normal map and the bump map? I'm just guessing, but with both would it look more detailed (like the normals catch the angle, the bump shades the depth?).
Not that I really reckon having all of this on would be in any way a good idea, but it could look very nice if used sparingly.
OrbWeaver on 17/11/2005 at 11:47
Specular and reflection are two different things. Specular gives you the "glistening" effect of metal, that moves with the light, but does not actually reflect back any part of the scene. Unfortunately a simple specular map, while it allows you to control the amount of light that is reflected, does not allow you to control the "shinyness" of the surface (i.e. how big or small the highlight is) - for this you would need a gloss map.
Ziemanskye on 17/11/2005 at 12:12
Just going by how I've seen the terms used in game editors.
The material browsers in Max and Maya contain a lot of options I don't really understand, or use, so they're still deeply archane to me.
And from what I've seen, the specular is usually attached to an environment map, so it's doing the reflection thing. It'd still therefor be the spec mask that controls how much light is on each part of the surface - and a static specular chanel to control light coming from the surface, like the skyline example.
str8g8 on 17/11/2005 at 13:09
Quote:
First. str8g8, what you're thinking off is probably the specular mask.
Maybe not the technical arty term for it, but our surfaces don't seem to shine naturally the way a Blinn or whatever would, so we need the specular to make it shine at all, then the mask to stop bits of it doing so.
Yes, that is what I'm thinking of, and that was what I expected the texture to be used for. The specular level can just be a value or a colour or whatever, the important bit is the mask, and that doesn't seem to be supported, though I haven't played around with it yet, for instance, it might use the alpha channel of the specular map as the mask, etc.
just thinking out loud.:erg:
OrbWeaver on 17/11/2005 at 14:18
Assuming that specular works the same way as in Doom 3, the map will vary from black (no specular) to white (full specular), possibly with colours supported as well. A mask is not needed since the specular amount can be reduced by adjusting the brightness in the map.
Ziemanskye on 17/11/2005 at 14:27
Yeah, that kind of thing, except I think the black/white map needs to be put in the Specular Mask box of the Ion Shader.
I think.
But the main part of my arguments is based on some rumour around here ages ago that the specular channel on the materials that use it automatically ends up being used like an environment map anyway.... So it is quite possible I suppose (since I can't test it myself anyway) that a regular texture in the Specular slot would do what OrbWeaver says.
New Horizon on 17/11/2005 at 15:43
Quote Posted by str8g8
Not sure about adding it to loot, it's more than likely that loot and non-loot items share the same materials. You would have to create a new set of materials specially for loot and re-export all the loot objects ... it's worth a try though ...
I'll have to open up all the loot objects in Max and export them anyway though, since they don't have any specular assigned to them yet but that shouldn't affect the junk items, since I will only be assigning the specular to the loot. To my knowledege, I would have to have open up any shared items and add the specular to them directly to affect them. Even if they're sharing the same set of textures, it shouldn't affect junk items if I only apply a specular to the loot.
str8g8 on 17/11/2005 at 23:48
No, you would only have to open the matlib in max and change the metal materials to have spec - any meshes that use that material would be affected by the changes. It's a good news\bad news thing though, because of the non-loot objects that share those same metal materials.
New Horizon on 18/11/2005 at 00:57
Quote Posted by str8g8
No, you would only have to open the matlib in max and change the metal materials to have spec - any meshes that use that material would be affected by the changes. It's a good news\bad news thing though, because of the non-loot objects that share those same metal materials.
Ahhhh, I getya. Oh well. Just have to separate them I guess.
