OK Stumped on Reflections/Mapping in Max.

Ali Fish I thought the last three pics were real at first. lol

why thank you sir,TBh i felt that i spammed them (posted before) glad you enjoyed !. the pic of 2 similar 51`s has a real one for comparison. can you tell which one at first glance ? There is still to much specular power and width over the black antiglare section on the lower insim 51 man o war. i imposed the real picture over the sim picture, all im saying is i believe my understanding of whats possible at the highest peak level is within the understanding of this specular fiile.it has convinced you has it not :)

and i hope ive explained it to an understandable degree, thanks for the appreciation on the work. and whilst proving it by your response with my work associated to the files in question. reality is whhat we are after, even if it is just at the first glance ;)

and well referring to the colour percieved when using it is really really irelevant which is my contribution to the topic in question in the preceeding posts. yet everyone refers to it. consider them individually is the way forward here. incidentally, my 32 bit photoshop when displaying individual channels somtimes shows monochrome, and 64 bit viewing in same ciircumstance shows monochrome dictated by the colourbase that is the chosen channel, either way if you load any image into thhat individual channel you can start to understand whats happening on an individual channel level. sounds complicated, but just percieve each channel as a black and white canvas. why? u may ask, a single channel holds 255 grades of shade between its extremes Black & White and thus is interpreted to make colour. so lets say red is at shade B&W 150, green is at shade 175 and blue is at shade 15, now we have colour codes, RGB colour codes... make sense ? at the end of the day its just a conveniant container for working alpha style channels in an extended way. i say alpha because people understand that, a black and white texture effectivly. most importantly also is tat direct x read these things this way and max plugins for ed models allow this too... in simple terms.

regards pixel art, consider those 255 grades of difference, 255 grades of shader power. just 1 is enough to produce an effect. like a scratch only visible in real life to due to lets say a rather shallow angular bounce of light, or the dulling affect of a smudge next to a polished section, or where the pilot climbed in. a fiinger print lol. (pending super high resolution textures like 8192 lol) then its a consideration of absolutely anything hinting at its materialistic presence. and then its how many bounces of light and which direction, its a deep old world of varying degrees of artistic freedom in there and its pixel art that can make it come alive imo. at amounts to absolute attention to every aspect of every pixel. that is not a talent photosop can achieve. much of the time i understand quite fundamentally how most plugins work, and i can replicate them sometimes to higher degree myself. but its just so time consuming at the end of the day. i think what ive done was worth it at most and thats the only reason i dabled there. i may dable again lol if its of bennefit some day.

start with a blank canvas, white. pick a single channel. load a B&W image in there, load a different B&W to each other channel and look at the effects whilst viewing all channels RG&B select top channel for this. its irelevant. lol. in the context of the p51 it seems relevant simply because all the channels are similarly designed. again that colour is irrelevant folks ! i`ll demonstrate it with 3 individual channels if anyone wants. or why dont you reverse engineer it so to speak. take a spec channel, view and copy a single channel to a new canvas, and look at them all and compare them. what you could see is how the original artist conceptualised them. when i did this, i had lightbulb moments pinging everywhere, because its not often i get to work as a modder on a shader system implemented in this way, and my knowledge graphically lent its hand there in a big way. so i went at the highest level i could concieve. to not totally change the plane, but use that to enhance what was there already with pixelart. to totally chhange the plane the way i do it would probally be another 100 hours work imo.

and i apologise for a lot of the edits, its just hard to explain because its quite deep.

i've been able to make the specular look better, but I still cant seem to get the mirror finish, in EDM Viewer or DCSW <shrug>

i've been able to make the specular look better, but I still cant seem to get the mirror finish, in EDM Viewer or DCSW <shrug>

i could try balance an intended metallic skin for you via my methods equivalent as possible to the 51 based upon the same processes, that could leave you to get the model settings right and dcs setup. but your best to look at the default bare metal skin for the p51 for your reference othherwise with attention payed to each individual channel. its effectivly the same thing as i offer.

Im thinking its a max issue, i think i have reflection at 0 in max, i'll double check, but it seems to be a max value somewhere the I'm not setting correctly, as I can get it to look shiney now, just not polished.

Im thinking its a max issue, i think i have reflection at 0 in max, i'll double check, but it seems to be a max value somewhere the I'm not setting correctly, as I can get it to look shiney now, just not polished.

by trial and error you shall percieve it then.

DEEP lol

Thanks for the indepth view on specular art :)

Well, when i called it a night last night, I had gotten Specular Flares and stuff to look decent, still trying to figure out why the BLUE channel isnt doing anything (no polished metal look),

I think i might have to check my Bump DDS and make sure that one is exported/done correctly, it might be fighting with the spec layer.

Should I be using "Metal" or "Blinn" in 3ds?

I had painted the R and B layers in bright (well in RGB Mode, they were white), and G layer Black, (Maybe that's backwards?).

Im gonna put my spec layer on the P-51 to see if it looks that same as the ED Spec Layer, that will effectively rule out Photoshop/Layer issue.

Maybe you have the wrong idea of what the channels do. Red is specular strength, blue is specular width/glossiness, and green is reflection strength

My Specular Layers work fine on the P-51 (the ones I made for the F-100)

So it appears to be a Max/Material Issue, after Hockey Practice I'll post images of the Max Material Settings.

Maybe you have the wrong idea of what the channels do. Red is specular strength, blue is specular width/glossiness, and green is reflection strength

unless its changed, blue is/was reflection channel. green is width.

edit:

Nevermind, I fixed it, it was the Bump Map, It was exported to DDS in the wrong template (im guessing it was DXT1 in stead of Normal Map)

edit:

 

Nevermind, I fixed it, it was the Bump Map, It was exported to DDS in the wrong template (im guessing it was DXT1 in stead of Normal Map)

no make sense. dxt1 is just a dds image with R, G and B channels. dxt 3 or 5 as they are commonly used contain alpha, but your normal map can be independant so DXT1 is good for normal map. its only the normal map processing that dictates its a normal map not the file type. dxt or format type etc.

infact. open a normal map and have a look at the individual channels. look theres only 2 ,1 of them containts no information at all. ! why u may ask. well ill leave you to work it out.

no make sense. dxt1 is just a dds image with R, G and B channels. dxt 3 or 5 as they are commonly used contain alpha, but your normal map can be independant so DXT1 is good for normal map. its only the normal map processing that dictates its a normal map not the file type. dxt or format type etc.

 

infact. open a normal map and have a look at the individual channels. look theres only 2 ,1 of them containts no information at all. ! why u may ask. well ill leave you to work it out.

well i didnt fix it, sI was in a rush this morning, and didnt noticed that when i re-saved the Bump DDS it saved with a different color than before. it made the mesh shiney, but it took away the bump.

I did get it to look alot better by tuning the Green and blue maps better.

Ok, Played with this some more, and I've concluded I must be doing something wrong:

in the Attached Images, 1 is Full Red (255.0.0), One is Full Green, (0.255.0) and one is full Blue (0.0.255)

The Green shows up as Matte (no Reflection or Flares when I rotate, the Red is obviously a huge Flare, But the problem is the BLUE)

Seeing as the Full Blue is supposed to be mirror like, well, i must be doing something wrong, I see a SLIGHT reflection on the wings at a certain angle but that's It.

Is there a Channel/Setting in Max that Im Supposed to be Adjusting to Get the Engine to Recognize BLUE as Reflection?

Screenshots of MAX Material Settings Attached. But it seems to be the same problem on all the model's I've exported.

It appears you don't have your Reflection setting pointed to your Spec map...according to your first attachment, post 40

No, it should recognize the channels even with default material settings. You must have done something weird somewhere along the line. I know you tried putting your texture on another's model in modelviewer, but could you try putting someone else's texture on your model? Disable all channels (in the model) except diffuse and specular. I've seen something similar, and it's always been due to dumb slip-ups during texture exporting.

what upsets me is that there are so many people round here that know exactly what the problem might be. Atleast there are those that have succesfully set this shader method up!. but no. its a competition for everyone to keep info to themselves. and everyone is involved and to blame really, inc me. There is no real design community here at all that are willing to share. to get everyone to the end goal.

ive literally had to stop trying to find out information myself, when you get your messages ignored it becomes futile just trying to learn somthing. they all know but wont share. what a poor community modding scene its turning out to be at times. i just dont understand at the end of the day, people would rather things looked sub par or crap as i say lol.... rather than get the correct guy for the job. its ludicrous at the end of the day. this isnt aimed at you mr skatezilla, just the annoyance of it being so hard to learn or get it right with knowledge leading to it, trial and error is not damn well good enough. but its all we are left with. btw do you skate ?

what upsets me is that there are so many people round here that know exactly what the problem might be. Atleast there are those that have succesfully set this shader method up!. but no. its a competition for everyone to keep info to themselves. and everyone is involved and to blame really, inc me. There is no real design community here at all that are willing to share. to get everyone to the end goal.

 

ive literally had to stop trying to find out information myself, when you get your messages ignored it becomes futile just trying to learn somthing. they all know but wont share. what a poor community modding scene its turning out to be at times. i just dont understand at the end of the day, people would rather things looked sub par or crap as i say lol.... rather than get the correct guy for the job. its ludicrous at the end of the day. this isnt aimed at you mr skatezilla, just the annoyance of it being so hard to learn or get it right with knowledge leading to it, trial and error is not damn well good enough. but its all we are left with. btw do you skate ?

I know there's alot of little things in MAX that need to be set a certain way, that I Havent done for other parts (BORT Numbers, Decals etc).

But this one is just dangling in front of me, it's weird that Red and Green work, but BLUE doesnt produce a reflection like it should. Like either Im setting up textures wrong, or normals or something.

It appears you don't have your Reflection setting pointed to your Spec map...according to your first attachment, post 40

I've tried with and without the reflection linked to Spec.