SOLVED! Specular Textures in Windows 7

Thanks! This is my favorite part of modding, finding new ways to trick the game into doing something it doesn't want to do. The downside is the countless time consuming failed attempts, but it's always worth a shot!

Bravo/4 said:
Send it my way Daniel, this is very interesting!
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You've got mail!
 
I'm going to have some time at home over the next two weeks. Any chance you're ready to reveal the process for doing this yet?
 
Yeah, I think so. I've been waiting as I've kept finding new things to try and I wanted to write them up all together, but I think I've found all I will find in this area. Get your hex editor ready!
 
Okay I'm pretty confused now. I've found that changing the intensity value of the material glossiness factor has an effect, but it does not seem to follow any logical relationship. If I make it a little lower the shine increases all out of proportion, but going still lower than that turns it off entirely as if the SpecularEnable flag was still set to False. If I increase it then it stays the same for a bit or turns off again if I go higher. What's the key to being able to tune it to something reasonable?
 
Okay, I just discovered where I was doing it wrong. It's not the intensity of the glossiness, or the specular factor, it's just the RGB values of the specular factor.
 
Yep, that's it. I wasn't able to figure out the glossinness factor. Which values did you try on which airplane?
 
I was just working with the stock P47D to teach myself how to do it. I ended up with 30, 30, 30, which is a pretty dark grey (19% brightness in PhotoShop) for that plane since it had a matte painted skin. The higher the values the more specular reflection you get (above 60, 60, 60 it starts looking pretty unnatural), and that would be better for an all metal finish. FF FF FF and a 40 (instead of 42) in the glossiness intensity setting would give you the Silver Surfer effect.

One thing I did find out in working on the Bv222 skin color was that the RGB values in the M3D seem to be mapped in reverse to PhotoShop hex value strings (56 5D 3F in PhotoShop has to be entred as 3F 5D 56 in the M3D file to produce the same color)
 
I was just thinking about this some more, and tested making it something other than a neutral grey. Sure enough you can tint the reflection to colors other than white. Try using 2A 48 54 and it will look like the skin is reflecting a warm yellow sun.
 
Sounds like you've mastered it and found some new things yourself, nice work! I've started work on a tutorial and I'd be happy to include some of your discoveries if you like. Just write 'em up and I'll include them and credit you. Great to have another mind working on this.
 
Once I started converting all the CFS3 Stock and Firepower aircraft in the base install I decided to settle on 20 20 20 or 13% Grey for the specular factor RGB on anything with a painted finish. That gives just enough shine to make it look like painted metal with a light sheen to it. Some of the models are a bit tricky to figure out the material assignments, and various odd parts of the aircraft surface are controlled by different parts of the list. I can usually find them by looking for the specular texture number (usually 01, but not always, and there can be more than one) based on the _s.dds file location in the sequence.
 
I find I like it somewhere in the range of 25 25 25 to 35 35 35 depending on the kind of paint or material underneath as I find I can get more definition out of the specular textures but this is certainly just a matter of taste. Internal surfaces I set at a lower value. Also, some aircraft don't have textures associated with each material but these can still be edited. Lots can be done with the appearance of glass for example. Looking for the texture numbers is how I find my way around, materials with no texture assigned have ff ff in that spot.
 
Were you thinking of releasing the modified files as a download package, or just leaving it up to everyone to do it themselves from the tutorial. Each one goes fairly quickly, but it takes hours to go through every one. I did 50 yesterday to just get one of my many installs done. :isadizzy:
 
50! You're moving fast! Uploading the stock models shouldn't be a problem, the rest may get complicated getting the required permissions as many of the modelers aren't active anymore.
 
The m3d files in all the aircraft folders. For the basics you can read Corrado la Posta's tutorial which I have posted here on the last page of the knowledge base sticky. I am currently putting together a more detailed tutorial that deals more specifically with what we are doing here.
 
Any more info on this? I've just replaced my old 7600GS with an HD 4670, so I'm game to see if it works on an ATI card with XP... If anybody says anything about my choice of card, I am getting around 20fps more, thus prolonging the life of my already ancient rig! But it runs WXP, DX9 and the mos file editor without a hitch...
 
I've been busy refining how I do it, tutorial to be completed "eventually."

I'll hazard a guess that it would work for you. I was able to get it to get it to work on an XP laptop and a windows 8 laptop, both with only the stock chipset, no proper graphics card to speak of. I'm not at home now, but later I'll upload a modded stock model for people to test on their systems. Make sure you have the above mentioned shader tweaks enabled for it to work.
 
I'm glad you said that! Because after reading Corrado's how-to, not for the first time, I was left wondering what on earth it was all about. I don't have a very mathematical mind...
 
Fortunately there isn't much math to speak of other than counting or I would never have gotten it. The main thing is learning how to recognize the right spots to make your edit, once you have that down there's really no magic to it.
 
I've done enough of them now that I can see the patterns easily and know right where to change the numbers. It helps that I have my hex editor set to display rows at 36 characters wide, and that really help keep things lined up in repeating patterns.
 
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