Dynamic Shine

[Guest]

Does anybody know how to create dynamic shine on an aircraft? I am trying to achieve what PSS did on their Dash 8 Project. I know how to use alpha layers and such to create the relective textures, but I want to learn how to create the dynamic shine. Thanks for all your help that contributes!Greggory

[Guest Shane Strong CYHZ]

ya ditto here lolshane

[Guest]

If you mean the metal glare, then it can't be changed just by re-working the textures. It is a material property (specular color > black, specular power > 0) and it is stocked inside the mdl file. In fact, in FS2002 a material can have several attributes: its own "normal" color, specular color, highlight color and emmisive color. The "normal" and emmisive colors are overriden by textures. The specular and highlight colors remain even if you apply textures and alpha-layers.So, to achieve the effect - change the specular color to grey and the specular power to ~100.Hope that helpsDimitri

[Guest MelvinRafi]

Hi Dimitri! Thanks for the information. But I'm still a little confused about this... Could you possibly enlighten me on the following?- Do we set a specular map?- Do we set the specular color to solid black (0,0,0) or a shade of gray?- Which bit in the Material Editor are you referring to when you say "specular power"?- Do we lock the diffuse and specular colors?- Do we have to do anything with the "Specular Highlights" section (specular level, glossiness, soften)?I would greatly appreciate your help! Thanks a lot!:) Melvin Rafiwww.meljet.comBrand new FS2002 Boeing 777 under development!

[Guest]

Hi Melvin,I think we don't speak the same language. I refer to FSDS2 and its material editor. I hope my responses can help you but I am not sure they apply to GMAX at 100%- I don't know what specular map is. Another layer ? So far never used it.- The specular color is the color it shines when reflecting the light. Actually it determines also the brightness of the shining. So black = no shine at all. White = too much shine, not realistic. A shade of grey is O.K. You can make it red or green but I see no use for colorful shine.- Specular power is a separate field in FSDS material editor. I have an impression that its value is simply ignored- The diffuse color is overriden by textures. The specular color is the shine, so it rests.- We don't have the section "specular highlights" in FSDS. I suppose that it is exactly what you should modify.The best advice I can give you is to create a project with several dummy objects, affect them different colors/highlights/specular etc. and check how it looks in FS. This is how I learned to use materials. RegardsDimitri

[Guest MelvinRafi]

Thanks for the reply. I thought you were referring to GMax. I've already tried tinkering with specular color, specular maps, etc... in the GMax Material Editor as per what the "GMax Materials.doc" in the MakeMDL SDK says to no avail.So, my question is, does anyone know how to acheive the metal glare in GMax? If you look closely, the default FS2002 aircraft have them. So how do we do this?:) Melvin Rafiwww.meljet.comBrand new FS2002 Boeing 777 under development!

[Guest]

Thanks for the info..... I will just have to try things out.... :)Greggory

[JETninja 0]

Greg (and anyone else) the best person I know on this subject is FinnN. He sometimes visits in here, but he also runs the Offical GMAX FS2002 Forum (at the GMAX website) and he also has a great bunch of video tutorials (some on texturing) at his site: http://fp.finnn.f9.co.uk/In his real world job he deals with this stuff all the time, so hes got a good head start on understanding it.....

[Guest]

Cool! I will have to check this out. Melvin..... If you haven't stumbled upon this already, I was looking through GMAX and found this on specular lighting.Here is how to navigate to it:

[Guest]

To me the problem is that makemdl just ignores "glossiness" settings in Gmax.That's an example - you see if I set only glossiness parameter to 0, the model will look just the same as in sim... But now there is a cool shiny effect with glossiness at 50%. I can't find the way to get around this.

[Guest Milton]

This question was posed over at the gmax forum by Jan Visser back in July. Jan and I both had experimented with it but Finn Neuik and Gerald Van Der Harst got into the details for some interesting tests.There are two pages of this exchange here:http://www.gmaxsupport.com/forum/cgi-bin/u...c;f=12;t=000651and:http://www.gmaxsupport.com/forum/cgi-bin/u...12;t=000651;p=2EDIT: you will have to copy/paste these links into your browser or go to gmax forum and search for "specular". The thread is called "Specular highlites .... anyone????"This tracks all the thinking, tests, and results.The real question here relates to how these factors can affect an aircraft with textures, not just gmax visuals.Makemdl takes its own road and the result in FS2002 is different.Interesting reading there.Have fun.Milton

[Guest]

Thank you for that link, Milton.I cought the idea of all that...

[Guest]

Ok. Another interesting question... I tried applying the effect, but faced with yet another problem - some parts (rudder on the shot) don't have this lighting effect, but they use the same material. What could it be?

[Guest Milton]

The only things I can think of are:1. Is the rudder a DXT3 (or other alpha supporting format) with the same alpha channel as the fuse?2. Verify your maps/textures with Imagetool to see differences.3. Have you reapplied all these maps in gmax using the new settings.4. Are you using texture names with _t suffixes?This feature worked for me on the Dash 7 when testing though I only used it on the props and windows as I recall. The fuse and main control surfaces glossiness were alpha controlled for glossiness/reflectivity only. I found that this feature worked well on strongly curved or twisted surfaces but not on larger curvatures.Speculor highlite sizes seem to be controlled but not brightness. Bottom line is it is rarely usable without washing out the colors.My understanding is that is supported in CFS3, so therefore likely FS2004 (or whatever).Milton

[Guest MelvinRafi]

Thanks for the link Milton. Unless I'm missing something, I still don't get it - is it or is it not possible for GMax users to create the "sun shining on the metal effect", like what the default FS2002 aircraft or the new PSS Dash 8 have?:) Melvin Rafiwww.meljet.comBrand new FS2002 Boeing 777 under development!