UPLOADED: CFS3 Specular Shine Tutorial

gecko

gecko

Charter Member
Hi all,

I have just uploaded my tutorial for adding specular effects to aircraft for people using Windows 7 or 8 or a non-Invidia graphics card. Those who already have these effects working may still find a few of the topics useful as well. Available as soon as it gets approved.

Daniel
 
Thanks for the tutorial Daniel!

I've only glanced through quickly it and it seems to be very informative how to go about it!
Well done! :applause:

Cheers
 
ok ive used it ... alerted and seems works better than i had , again i guess your system specs help and a i have everything fully at sliders at 5 , so far so good - tks
 
windows 8

Was it mentioned in your tutorial for windows 8 has somebody managed to install cfs3 on windows 8
 
I have tried it on a windows 8 computer and it does work, but the config utility is a bit buggy. I don't have any advice on windows 8, I just installed it as normal. I can confirm that the methods detailed in the tutorial do work in windows 8.
 
Thanks for this Daniel, downloaded!

To speed up finding this, it's in CFS3 Other Add-ons - Utilities :- which is here
 
It comes just before the place where you can read the dds texture file names. It also helps to have your hex editor set to display rows at 36 characters wide, and that keeps things lined up in repeating patterns.

View attachment 82881

First I look for the large block of FFs
Then I find the textures being referenced in this case the row below the cell marked in blue begins with 00 00 01 00 and then the block of FFs. This points to the first and second textures in the list (counted in sequence as zero and one). Those are the main aircraft texture and the matching shadow map.
Backing up from there I find the last cell in the group of four controlling the spread of the specular effect and set it to 42.
The group of four right before that group of four controls the strength and shade of the specular effect in this case 30 30 30. Lower numbers make the effect weaker. Using something other than all the same number (creating grey) will give the effect a color tint (the sequence is Blue, Green, Red intensity).

Finding what controls the glass shine is a bit more difficult because there's typically not a texture associated with it to show what row you need to be in. Looking in the middle of the columns you can see a smaller block of FFs. Scanning down 7 and 9 rows from the top of the section there are a couple of groups of four with non-FF values entered in them. Changing the last value in these groups to 30 toned down the glass shine to the proper level. The group in the 10th row seemed to have no effect when I changed it so it's probably just something hidden out of sight inside the aircraft so I left it as it was originally.
 
I forgot to mention that for the glass shine you also needed to change the value from 00 to FF in the third cell of the group of four right before the group where the glass color is defined (5 cells to the left of where I changed it to 30).
 
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