Cannot get rid of shininess....and question on materials.

  • I am making slow but steady progress with the 326 conversion...but I have one issue with the "shininess" (for lack of a better word). I have set my materials so that the specular channel is assigned to a XXX_specular.bmp, while a XXX_specular_alpha is in the aicraft creation folder.

    I am using a specular .bmp which is dark grey, expecting to have a mild "brightness" of the surfaces... but what I get seems always a bright white "shining", regardless of "how white" the XXX_specular.bmp is. The XXX_specular_alpha.bmp seems to do its job. The "whiter" the smaller the reflection is (more glossy appearance as expected).
    Any guess of what am I doing wrong?

  • Hello Indiafoxtecho,
    there are a couple of sources for your problem. To find the right source, could you show small previews of all of your maps, and can you show me what shader you have assigned to your material?


    Wünsch
    IPACS

  • Hello Wünsch - above is a preview of the textures I am using for the fuselage. As for the material, I have copy-pasted one from the DR400 - shader setting is "standard exterior"

    (BTW would it be possible to have more information on what the various shader settings do? There are not may details in the SDK....)

  • looks like zou problem the "_reflection" the reflection is kind of a clear coad of paint, it always hase a sharp highlight and the landscape reflection is always sharp aswell. Make that one Black (RGB 0,0,0) and the shininess of your surface is only controled by the Specular and Specular_alpha.

    the standard is kind of the main shader, and with exterior and interior you define if the polygons ,that use this material, are outside or inside view. so the aerofly can handle them a bit differently. the others are for glass interior exterior and instruments. here you got the same, the interior glass is handled differently by the aerofly, the interiorglass does not show the landscape reflections, and the glass shader have pre-set values right now, so every canopy hase the same nice look, but it is still early access, so there can by changes on the system.

  • Thanks for your reply and for the additional information on the shaders...

    ...it worked, to some extent. I can get rid of the shining, by setting the reflection map to black (as you suggested) and by setting the specular_color map to black too, of course. This produces the "no shining at all" effect.

    What does not seem to behave as I expected, however, is the control of the specular_color of the specular_color map over the shininess. If it is black, no shininess OK. But if it is dark grey I would have expected a "dim" shininess - so that the orange paint would look "lighter" in those areas but not white.... but that does not seem to be the case. Even a very dark grey results in a fully "white" spot...which is larger or smaller depending on the specular_alpha as expected.

  • may this will help you
    to find the right set up, this is a grid of 20 X 20 balls

    in one direction i shift the specular and in the other i shift the specular alpha, just convert it like an aircraft

    Hey Michael,

    I tried to export that as a plane. It doesnt work. I looked in the files and it talks about another plane (name begins with a B).

  • So i just cleaned up the files, fixed some errors, now the CONVERTER should be able to convert this.

    so you just have to Convert it like an airplane, rightclick on the folder and choose the IPACS Aircraft Converter.

    an then you have a way to look at different Specular / Specular_Alpha - Settings in the Aerofly

    if it still does not work, please provide me a report.txt and a log file.