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MdlMat Confusion

Mick

SOH-CM-2025
I'm working on painting a model and there are two liveries I want to paint. One calls for a glossy finish - not high gloss like a show car or a Blue Angels jet, but glossy like a car or airplane with a glossy finish that's been out in the weather for a while. The other is a matte camouflage finish and I'd like to give it just a tiny hint of gloss, just a smidgen above dead flat. I've been able to do this in the past (on my old Win7pro rig) but I can't in my current Win10 rig.

I open the model in MdlMat, set it to specular and find the line that controls the external finish. There's a box for the specular gloss level. It comes up blank. If I enter zero and save it I get an extreme degree of reflectivity - not specular gloss. It's as if MdlMat somehow brought out and maximized the reflectivity in the model - while the alpha channel in the textures remains pure white. No matter - I don't have any desire to set specular gloss to zero - the model already has zero gloss. I just mention it in case it gives someone a clue.

The trouble is that while the program will accept any positive integer from 1 to 1000 in that selection block for gloss level, no matter what value I enter the results are exactly the same. I get a nice glossy finish, not extreme but I'd like to have it slightly less glossy. And I can't get anything like the slight hint of gloss I want for the camo scheme.

I don't know if this is a program glitch with MdlMat, which has worked perfectly in the past, a Win10 thing, or operator error.

If anyone has any ideas or advice on how I might get MdlMat to give me what I want all the time, rather than just something that's close only for fairly high gloss finishes, I'd love to hear it!
 
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