[ART] Specular

[Sel]

3DS



Ingame



No matter what colour the specular map is, it always creates white highlights, instead of coloured ones, which looks significantly worse than coloured specular.

Is there a way around this, or am I stuck with it?

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It's not that big a deal, but it does mean that it'll be impossible to make metal, and metal-like objects correct (since they return highlights that are brighter versions of their base colour, instead of white highlights )

[Statyk]

A specular map is made to add specfic shine, bright or dull. You need two textures. The colored one is the "diffuse"... specular is secondary, and is highlighted in specfic areas to make certain parts of models shinier than others. The brighter the white, the brighter the shine, the darker, the duller the shine.

[Sel]

A specular map is made to add specfic shine, bright or dull. You need two textures. The colored one is the "diffuse"... specular is secondary, and is highlighted in specfic areas to make certain parts of models shinier than others. The brighter the white, the brighter the shine, the darker, the duller the shine.

lol

You don't seem to understand what I'm saying.

A gold coloured piece of metal in real life will return gold highlights, not white highlights, however Amnesia is only returning white regardless of the gold colour in the specular map. I'm guessing the engine just flat out doesn't support coloured specular highlights.

Oh well!

[Statyk]

A specular map is made to add specfic shine, bright or dull. You need two textures. The colored one is the "diffuse"... specular is secondary, and is highlighted in specfic areas to make certain parts of models shinier than others. The brighter the white, the brighter the shine, the darker, the duller the shine.

lol

You don't seem to understand what I'm saying.

A gold coloured piece of metal in real life will return gold highlights, not white highlights, however Amnesia is only returning white regardless of the gold colour in the specular map. I'm guessing the engine just flat out doesn't support coloured specular highlights.

Oh well!

You're not getting gold highlights >> That's not really possible. In reality, light is increasing the color by raising its intensity where light is being reflected. place a doctor's overhead lamp or heavy duty light on gold. I guarantee when powerful enough, it will reflect white.

It's not very noticeable. If necessary, dim down your specular map to get a softer glow. It will come up a brighter gold if the specular map is just right.

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3DS



Ingame

There doesn't even seem to be a diffuse map...

[Sel]

There doesn't even seem to be a diffuse map...

That's because I disabled it to show Amnesia's lack of ability to handle coloured specular :v

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That's not really possible. In reality, light is increasing the color by raising its intensity where light is being reflected.

Uh yes it is possible in reality, go look at any coloured metal or metal like object (christmas balls for instance), and compare the highlights they receive under a white light, to that of a piece of polished wood or something.



vs



You will notice the metal-like object is giving off a distinctive brighter blue highlight, while the wood is giving off a pure white highlight.

Now let's apply this to 3d graphics.

This is a black and white specular.



And this is the coloured one.



You'll notice the coloured one looks far more believable than the black and white one.

I'm guessing this functionality was left out of the engine since grayscale specular uses less memory or something, oh well!

[Statyk]

" Uh yes it is possible in reality, go look at any coloured metal or metal like object (christmas balls for instance), and compare the highlights they receive under a white light, to that of a piece of polished wood or something. "

Yes, memory capabilities and honestly, it doesn't look natural to me on the ornament, every light reflects the color that it produces. if a red light shines on a red object, the glow will be vibrant red. if it is a red light on a blue surface, the glow will get purplish, understand? So when you shine white on a surface, you get a lighter and lighter version until the reflection glows white. Save the spec map and try it in the level editor with a pointlight similar to a candle. The light in the modelview is white. understand the issue here? Not including renders in the modeling program are never the best examples. Models I make in Maya don't look half the same as the HPL2 engine. But if it bothers you that there can't be hint of gold in the glow, either dim the specular map for the modelview or don't do it at all =\ Just tried to help. And really, it's not a noticable difference.

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" I'm guessing this functionality was left out of the engine since grayscale specular uses less memory or something, oh well! "

Also, it's not making the light grayscale, as I pointed out above, It is picking out shade for different levels of reflection. The whiter a section is, the brighter it will shine. The dimmer/blacker, the less shine. it is not setting it for colors.

Just trust me. it will be different in the end. it just matters on what color your lightsource is.

[Acies]

http://wiki.frictionalgames.com/hpl2/tut...loutsource

"The specular map handles the specular intensity and power for each pixel. The intensity uses the R channel and the power in the G channel, the B channel is not used and shall be black. Intensity sets the amount of specularity applied to a pixel, the higher value of the channel, the higher intensity. Power sets the sharpness of the specular highlight, a low value give a dull and diffuse look, while a high value give a shiny look."

No, it does not seem possible to give specular maps color using the amnesia engine, since it will not read colors as colors but merely as values for interpreting a white/black scale.

Why reading a specular map of a red/green image is better than a black/white I do not know, since I have limited experience of modeling/graphics engines.

(Specular maps in Amnesia should be a mixture of red/green.)

[palistov]

Try placing the model in a level and cast a similarly colored light source on it. That might give you the soft golden glow you're looking for. The model editor is using a white light which probably is why you're getting that funky white glow.

Also, try experimenting with a weaker specular. Maybe you could try tweaking the diffuse texture itself to make the color more vibrant?