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MdlMat Confusion

Mick

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!
 
Mick,

I'm still using MDLmat on an (offline) WIN 7 PC.

The only time I've seen it behave like this is with a model that's been created with GMax.

I did find that using Allen's DOSmdl program, with a "shiny" command batch file still works on GMax mdls, but it gives everything the same shine/sheen though.

You can get Allen's DOSmdl at SOH.

I've attached a copy of the notes I made, just in case you find it useful.
 

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UncleTgt said:
Mick,

I'm still using MDLmat on an (offline) WIN 7 PC.

The only time I've seen it behave like this is with a model that's been created with GMax.

I did find that using Allen's DOSmdl program, with a "shiny" command batch file still works on GMax mdls, but it gives everything the same shine/sheen though.

You can get Allen's DOSmdl at SOH.

I've attached a copy of the notes I made, just in case you find it useful.
Click to expand...
Thanks! :ernaehrung004:

I'll save your info with my reference files.

David uses FSDS, not Gmax. I don't seem to have run into this issue before, but on previous models since I learned (thanks to l'Iguane) how to gloss a model, we've only needed one or two planes with glossy finished scattered among mainly reflective natural metal ones that I might have just entered a figure in MdlMat and figured I'd been lucky and got pretty much what I wanted on the first try. At my age my fading memory might not recall that sort of detail.

Anyway, I now find myself wishing for a slightly less glossy finish for most of the skins in our current project. What I have now is fine for a new airplane not long out of the factory. I was hoping for something more like a plane that's spent some time out in the sun, having lost just a bit of it's gloss. That's tolerable to me since I'm no good at weathering, so it's just as well that the planes look like they would have when they were newly assigned to their squadrons rather than after some time in service.

Back in the days of my previous rig that ran Win7pro with virtual XP I could use Shiny, Ivan Hsu's Shine program with Jeff Delhaye's Windows interface. It offered several levels of gloss plus reflectivity of you wanted it, and the gloss levels looked different enough to cover any paint job. Sadly, though my current Win10 rig has an XP virtual machine but Shiny doesn't work in it and MdlMat doesn't work any better than it does in Win10.

I will peruse your information and see if it might tell me something that will give me more control of finishes.

Cheers!
 
Shine 'should' work in versions of FSDS2 models and later. Doesn't work in FSDS1 models at all as they do not contain the materials sections required.

My thoughts would be:
1. Windows version, haven't tried using this since Vista.
2. Material set up within the source model, potentially regarding transparency/light mapping (night textures basically)/reflectivity settings (set as on or off in FSDS)
3. hmm, guess that's it.

I wrote a tutorial for OBIO way back on how to enable reflectivity within GMax/FSDS2+ models years ago. Probably still have it somewhere. It is very technical and involves HEX editing the model in something like Frhed and lots of sharp eye work and snooping. It also doesn't always work due to the ordering of materials/parts in the original model hierarchy list. It would be FAR easier to work with the source code if David is willing and/or still has the files.
 
Desert Rat said:
Shine 'should' work in versions of FSDS2 models and later. Doesn't work in FSDS1 models at all as they do not contain the materials sections required.

My thoughts would be:
1. Windows version, haven't tried using this since Vista.
2. Material set up within the source model, potentially regarding transparency/light mapping (night textures basically)/reflectivity settings (set as on or off in FSDS)
3. hmm, guess that's it.

I wrote a tutorial for OBIO way back on how to enable reflectivity within GMax/FSDS2+ models years ago. Probably still have it somewhere. It is very technical and involves HEX editing the model in something like Frhed and lots of sharp eye work and snooping. It also doesn't always work due to the ordering of materials/parts in the original model hierarchy list. It would be FAR easier to work with the source code if David is willing and/or still has the files.
Click to expand...
I'm sure it's a Win10 system thing. Shiny worked in my long ago WinXP rig and I could use it on my old Win7pro rig, but if memory serves I had to run it in Win7pro's virtual XP modet. My current Win10 has an XP virtual machine that I got from elsewhere a few years ago (forget the source's name, and they're no longer in the virtual OS business) but Shiny won't work in it.

MdlMat works the same in Win10 and in the XP VM - it adds gloss but doesn't allow me to set the level of glossiness. Fortunately, the level it insists upon is acceptable to me, just not quite what I would prefer.

I've been painting David's models for years and he's used FSDS2 since it came out, so he's not doing anything differently. It's my current rig that's doing things somewhat differently than previous ones.
 
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