Shinneh and reflective, split the two please.

[smoth]

Could you guys please consider splitting specular and reflective to green for reflective and blue for specular?

PLEASE it would make a WORLD of difference.

[Snipawolf]

I support this as well. Not all war machines have the sheen of a new car.

Tank

Car

[Warlord Zsinj]

That means a lot of backlogged work to do

[Kloot]

It's easily done (I have the "patch" ready), but this will affect
the look of existing S3O's. If you people don't mind having to
edit all of your second textures, I'm fine to commit it.

[smoth]

I have no problem updating all of my s3o models a total of 72 for gundam alone . Not counting TD.

[Sheekel]

do us a favor and post some screenies of the difference when this gets done please

[smoth]

will do.

[SpikedHelmet]

72? Maybe if you had our 285 you wouldn't be suggesting this patch.

Can you please try and do it in a way that won't completely fuck over everybody but smoth? We've probably got 72 fucking texture files that we'd need to do over because of this, ontop of those 285 units.

[Kloot]

No, antagonizing everyone is obviously what I have in mind.

Smoth: put this file in your SVN Spring base/ directory if you want to
experiment with separate reflection and specular channels without
waiting for .76b2, good luck convincing your colleagues though.

* http://rapidshare.com/files/100349510/s ... t.sdz.html

[smoth]

spiked it doesn't fuck anything over. at the WORST all you would have to do is paste your green layer onto the blue layer for the texture 2. However, separation of reflective and specular into two channels is very good. It is not like this is a huge amount of new work. Calm down man.

[Gnomre]

Spiked, it's not a gigantic deal if you wanted to be lazy. Here are a couple comparison shots:

First, with the original springcontent.sdz:


With Kloot's modified one a couple posts up:


Those skins were entirely unmodified between the screenshots. The only thing that changed was that one sdz with whatever changes Kloot made inside it.

It does mean we definitely will have to edit some skins (the stormtroopers to give them shiny armor that isn't super reflective, and all solar panels, for example) but there's certainly room to be lazy.

[smoth]

mmmmmmmmm shineh storm troopers!

[Warlord Zsinj]

Hmmm, if this is going to be done, I think that specularity should remain in the green channel, and reflectivity should be in the blue channel. In my opinion, this would cause the least impact on games that don't change their textures. Reflectivity is typically very subtle, and generally just helps to light a unit in a similar way to how the map is lit - and this typically happens with coloured lighting anyway.

[rattle]

I found out by myself, bah... should've read the forum earlier.

units3o.fp, units3o_shadow.fp:

MUL specular, specular, extraColor.y;

becomes

MUL specular, specular, extraColor.z;

Thus the blue value is used for specularity... or if you prefer the other way, change extraColor.y to z for the operations which involve reflections.

Anyway, no more tinting and no need to use glow to make up for that. Awesome.

[smoth]

ok, to quell these concerns, it seems that the consensus is that people want:
specular as green
reflective as blue.

I do not agree with the sentiment but it isn't a big deal, I am fine either way. So kloot could you switch the green and blue to satisfy the last concerns?

[Warlord Zsinj]

Well, let's hear your arguments for your option, Smoth? I am also not particularly fussed with either, but I think that specularity should be in the green slot.

The reason why I think specular should remain in the green slot is because specularity is the most obvious and noticeable light-reaction effect on units, with reflection being far more subtle. Therefore, I believe the impact on existing s3o units that are not updated is likely to be far less if they lose reflectivity (through a black blue channel - I've been blacking out all my blue channels incase it ever became something like transparency) compared to specularity.

[smoth]

the reason is that most people, including argh(see normal map thread), seem to believe that we do not have specular. Reflections add a good bit of textural ambience to something. I know some people see it as little more then tinting, reflections are VERY important when you consider that they help make the unit feel part of the environment. For a long time reflective maps were painted on things to add immersion:


BFG model from generations arena look at the pipes etc.

in TA, the goal was to have a horizon line to represent reflective surfaces and not the glimmer of metal in the sun. Cockpits are blue because their angle would reflect the sky where as most metal sports a horizon line:



That doesn't mean that specular does not produce a great metal effect or that people should not/do not use it..


However, it has always been the standard to use reflections of the horizon or sky to represent metalics:


Meh, I feel specular is important to a good metalic but past obscuring details to get a cool glimmer it really adds little to the the texture unless you want a more plastic or shinneh paint look.

Either way, I don't care, as long as the patch is kept and you guys hurry up and decide so that when I get back from this wedding etc I can apply it to my project.

[Argh]

I did not say we do not have specular components in the .S3O shader. What I did say is that I wasn't sure how Trepan / jK were going to get around that part of Spring's rendering passes, and deliver normalmaps. Not the same thing. A normalmap shader needs a specular component to work, Smoth. If they let the normal .S3O render pass do its thing, then tried to render a normalmap over it, it'd look wrong.

I also said that you need a spec map and a normal map to achieve what people refer to as "bumpmaps", and that a RGB spec map, as opposed to a grayscale one, would result in much cooler effects.

This whole thread is full of ways to make us waste terrific amounts of time, imo. I really don't think there are huge uses of a seperate spec map, except for the rare cases of objects that are reflective without specularity (er, I'm still trying to think of one) or shiny without any reflectivity... more opportunities there (plastics, mainly) but meh, it's not that big of a deal. A specmap with a normalmap is a completely different animal, Smoth.

Either Trepan / jK finish the LuaMaterials stuff, and we finally quit using the stock materials, or they don't, in which case we shouldn't change this right now. If you really want a custom shader for .S3O, considering it's current limitations, then just distribute what Kloot made available with your game. But it's incredibly dumb to want to make everybody have to do hours and hours of work, that they'll have to re-do when we can just use a LuaMaterial option, for something like this.

[KDR_11k]

A normalmap shader needs a specular component to work, Smoth.

Bullhonkey. It's nice to have but not necessary. Specular is mostly used to advertise your bumpmaps to everyone (resulting in "everything looks like plastic" complaints).

[Argh]

Without a specular component, even a gentle one, a normalmap is practically invisible, at long draw distances. Using spec colors that are cooler than white and closer to the base colors of the material can keep the plastic look down.