Orange-Green specularity?

[Obliviator27]

Hm... That's good information, I've been linking everything up before I export to be on the safe side. Can't hurt, right? :]

Of course not. ^^

[Your Computer]

Hirnwirbel and I found that if you didn't link the model to the the texture in the modeling program, when exporting as a .dae, the model would not recognize any other file attached to it. Thus, if you want a diffuse, spec and normal, load it up in Maya/ Max/ Blender then export.

This is how we found it: models, not only from Hirnwirbel, but the community, too, were not showing up in the HPL2 Engine's Model Editor. If you attached a .mat to it, it would show sometimes. If you place your model + textures in the same folder in the entities folder, it still would not recognize them. Until she linked the textures to the model in Maya, the model showed up invisible.

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Now, it may not be the same for everyone, but that was a problem we happened to figure out. If I'm wrong, please let me know (I've been trying to find solutions for huge problems in the community, thus far, I think I'm doing a decent job). :]

As Obliviator27 said, only the diffuse texture is required when exporting to DAE. If you add specular maps, normal maps, etc, to the mesh in the 3D modeling program, that is irrelevant to the HPL2 engine. So long as you have the diffuse map as the primary texture for your mesh, mapped by UV, then you're good to continue. I would even go as far as to say that the extension of the texture and even the very existence of the file on the file system is irrelevant to the HPL2 engine. In the end, the game uses the name of the diffuse texture referenced in the DAE file to search out for a MAT file with the same name. In that MAT file you could have an entirely different diffuse texture than the one you referenced in the 3D modeling program.

The game relies heavily on the resources.cfg file when searching for game resources, like textures and MAT files. Normally, the HPL2 suite tools have no issues loading textures if the mesh and the textures are contained all in the same folder, and in the case of the level editor loaded during the active session. The game also loads the custom story's resources when loading the custom story. If your mesh ever has issues displaying textures in one of the HPL2 programs (including the game), chances are you did something wrong (e.g. not using UV coordinates for the primary, diffuse texture). If you believe you fixed the issue, but the HPL2 tools are still showing something wrong, then try deleting MSH files and restarting the tool. The editors tend to cache the things you load in memory without checking for differences.

[Acies]

Diffuse name = mat name. I think you can you as far as manually creating a mat file with the name of the diffuse, then attach any maps to it and the model should load fine

Edit: Above post by Your Computer pretty much hits the spot.

[crisosphinx]

I see, I see. ;]

I suppose I should have realized this sooner. Then again, my default modeling skills tell me to link all materials to the model before I even export it so if it's opened by another computer, a different engine, ad firm, etc., the materials are already linked so they can render it out correctly.

I did find it funny that the material name always changed to "item/characterDIFFUSE.mat". Now I completely know why. ;]

Guess the reason why people were having problems was that they weren't linking the diffuse at all (I've never had that problem personally).

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Is it wrong to use greyscale specular maps if they work how you want them to? Or is it more of a "standard" to do the RG channels?

It probably works, but it will give you the same values for gloss as for specular. A greyscale picture that has been saved as RGB has the exact same map in every channel. HPL ignores the blue channel, so it just gets all the information it needs from the red and green channel.
I'm not sure what happens if you save it as an 8bit (only one channel) however, since in that case HPL is missing a channel that should be there. o.O

So, as long as your specular and gloss map are supposed to have the same values you can do it like that. There are cases however, where you want to have different values... wood for example has low spec and low gloss > would work fine with your method. Smooth plastic has high spec and high gloss > would work fine too. Brushed metal on the other hand has high spec and low gloss - here you'd need different maps for the best result.