Advanced texture stuff in gmax...

[Guest christian]

I did some more experiments.It seems as if the texturing in gmax for scenery hasn't been finished in time for FS2002, so we just have some semi-support, some stuff works, other things don't.In general, the main support we have for buildings is:TEXTURE_BUILDINGTEXTURE2_NIGHTThat's how it's written in the SDK, and that works fine for me. Now, I'm sure we can also use TEXTURE_SPRING, etc to make seasonal textures, but that's not supported by gmax. I think Arno got this to work...As we've seen, oddly enough, gmax doesn't export TEXTURE_BUILDING but TEXTURE_AIRCRAFT instead, which can cause vanishing textures. I already had a suspicion why gmax does this, and I just confirmed it:TEXTURE2_REFLECT and TEXTURE2_LIGHTMAP only work with TEXTURE_AIRCRAFT, but not with TEXTURE_BUILDING. As I also elaborated earlier, TEXTURE_REFLECT isn't modelled realistically on buildings, but gives a rather metallic look. Ok for airplanes, but not for buildings. Indeed the SDK docs only pair REFLECT and LIGHTMAP with AIRCRAFT. So, I think, this isn't fully ready for buildings yet and we have to wait for FS2004. If you don't care that the reflectivity isn't dominated by the sun light, but the ambient light, you can still use REFLECT on buildings, but you risk loosing textures and tall buildings completely textured with REFLECT look just plain stupid.Now, there also are some other undocumented textures:TEXTURE2_MASK / NONETEXTURE2_DETAILTEXTURE2_SHADERI couldn't get any of those to work, probably we have to wait for FS2004. SHADER looks very interesting because that should give us the ability to do really neat effects, like warping textures (good for water), animated textures(good for animated ad boards), and environmental mapping (good for 'real' window reflections)...An alternative for reflective building fronts (eg glass skyscrapers) is to set the specular colour in gmax. Don't use a highlight texture and don't use an alpha channel, but set the highlight colour to the colour of your light source that your building should reflect (white or grey would be a good colour, but you could set it to blue if you want to simulate blue glass), and set the highlight level. The highlight level will be exported to specular power and is a factor of 10 smaller than specified in gmax. This will give you the colour you specified as highlight on the sunside blended with your texture. The highlight level / specular power specifies at which angles the effect is strongest. For example with a low specular power the sunny side will almost from any view direction look like your specified colour. With a high specular power, only when you are in front of the sunny side and look at it with a 90 degree angle, you will see the specular colour, otherwise it blends with the texture. This is probably the most realistic setting.Cheers, Christian

[arno 1]

Thanks, very interesting summary :).>That's how it's written in the SDK, and that works fine for >me. Now, I'm sure we can also use TEXTURE_SPRING, etc to >make seasonal textures, but that's not supported by gmax. I >think Arno got this to work... I couldn't get it to work with the TEXTURE_WINTER, etc commands, so I used the old Fs98 way to get a changing texture (that is checking the value of the variable 6F8 and then changing the material used according to that).Arno

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Member Netherlands 2000 Scenery Team[a href=http://home.wanadoo.nl/arno.gerretsen]http://home.wanadoo.nl/arno.gerretsen/banner.jpg[/a]

[Guest odog]

thanks christian,very well put...You have a way of making something that confusing make sense, even to me!odog

[Guest]

>>In general, the main support we have for buildings is: >>TEXTURE_BUILDING >TEXTURE2_NIGHT >>That's how it's written in the SDK, and that works fine for >me. Now, I'm sure we can also use TEXTURE_SPRING, etc to >make seasonal textures, but that's not supported by gmax. I >think Arno got this to work... Hey buddy. Which SDK has the commands like LANDING_LIGHT, TEXTURE_BUILDING, etc? I would love to know all the commands that there is thanks. Leandro

[Guest christian]

Some of the stuff is in the newest scenery SDK (2002) and the 2000 scenery SDK. Many things are undocumented though. You find them when you 'rip' the include files out of BGLC, eg using Visual Studio.Cheers, Christian