Adding Specular Shine to the FH-1

[PutPut]

The pic shows my recent FH-1 Phantom where I have added specular shine to the aircraft. Dave Nunez's FSDSXTweak program makes it possible to do the equivalent of the complete material editor in Gmax or 3dsmax with FSDSv3.51. In FS9 one did this rather easily by entries in the materials themselves. It is more complex in FSX (what else is new?) because one assigns a texture to each material bucket. My first attempt was too bright, so I am learning how to control things in the alpha channel of the specular texture. If and when I am fully satisfied I will upload a mod.

Cheers, Paul

[Panther_99FS]

Thanks Paul! :applause:

[N2056]

Paul, I use Gmax but I think the specular map behaves the same for FSDS...the color layer is the color that is reflected from the surface, and the alpha layer controls the size of the 'hotspot'. An easy way to do the color is to take the diffuse texture, add a black layer on top of it & then adust the opacity of the black layer to create a darkened version of the original that works well as a base specular map. There are some good threads on specular maps over at FFDS... :mixedsmi:

Looks good so far! :applause:

[michael davies]

You can alter specualr shine in FSx two ways, one is via the specular map, the other is through the material editor shipped with the SDK, its generally accepted that you cannot change the materials specular parameters ike you could with FS9, they are wrong, you can, you can adjust a models specular shine just like you could with FS9, you need to change the materials attributes from Gmaxs FSx materials roll out menu.

Its late and I cant remember the exact naming but look for my posts in UKMILS Chinook thread ( I may have even posted some screenies ? )which details how to do it and if further proof needed, check out the Chinook in sim, it really does work :). I only know how to do it in Gmax or Max, sadly not FSDS, but it might be possible to do it that package as well ?.

One down side to this method is that it makes all of the model that is mapped from that texture the same specular value, the up side is that it is quick, easy and simple to do with instant results and doesnt require lots of trial and error with alpha maps and specular textures. Alphas maps are better for areas that require differing specular values with out having to resort to mapping seperate polys to different materials, a good example of this would be anti glare panels on aircraft noses, especially gloss painted or bare metal planes, a material shine will make that area the same as the fuselage, a map will allow you to alter just the anti glare panel, its much more accurate and concise, and a heap more load of work to boot.

I'd fully recommend material shine for beginners or people like me with short attention spans who just want to get the model in sim LOL, once you understand how that all works then move upto the specular maps technology if you wish.

Best

Michael

[PutPut]

I think I am getting the hang of this, but I did forget to mask out the wing walk, I don't think they were very shiney.

Paul