Changing green specs to something less glossy.

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trexjones
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Changing green specs to something less glossy.

Post by trexjones »

Hey guys, I know the basics of what makes a good spec image thanks to Old Mate Joe, but I was curious -- I've got a number of models with specs that look like this, and I was wondering what you guys might suggest doing with them to get them to a better, less glossy look. And obviously less green.

Here's how it looks in XPS: Image

Here's the spec: Image
Any suggestions?
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Ems
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Re: Changing green specs to something less glossy.

Post by Ems »

Look into separate channels, something in there might be something more suitable. Dunno what you use for editing textures, in Photoshop it's channels tab at the right. You can copy channels and paste onto images as new textures. Blue looks reasonable, though I dunno if it's spec or gloss (gloss is useless for XPS, but you can still use it as something else), but it's darker and has proper detail to it.

Usually textures like this contain stuff like gloss maps, detail, AO, specmaps and more as RGBA, depending on game. Use smaller specular value for the mesh and/or change brightness and contrast of your specmap.
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trexjones
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Re: Changing green specs to something less glossy.

Post by trexjones »

AH! That makes sense! I think I've got a solid idea of where I can go based on what you've just said -- This is the original if it's of any use or interest... http://sta.sh/01wwqhp3r2m1
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Ems
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Re: Changing green specs to something less glossy.

Post by Ems »

I just remembered you draw for living and I feel very ignorant right now :XD:

But yeah, blue channel on this one seems like specular, others may be gloss, AO, roughness, sss even, but I don't know much about those and they may look different depending on game engine. The odd colours are just result of all layers together put into one texture for the engine to use, so if you see something similar in the future, be sure there's something in the channels.

Not to be confused with masks, however. They are constructed in similar way, but have their distinctive "flat" colour filled look.
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XNAaraL
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Re: Changing green specs to something less glossy.

Post by XNAaraL »

Ems wrote:Look into separate channels, something in there might be something more suitable. Dunno what you use for editing textures, in Photoshop it's channels tab at the right. You can copy channels and paste onto images as new textures. Blue looks reasonable, though I dunno if it's spec or gloss (gloss is useless for XPS, but you can still use it as something else), but it's darker and has proper detail to it.

Usually textures like this contain stuff like gloss maps, detail, AO, specmaps and more as RGBA, depending on game. Use smaller specular value for the mesh and/or change brightness and contrast of your specmap.
???
Why is a gloss map useless?
Example:
xnalara.home-forum.com wrote:render Groups 38/39:
This new Render groups #38 (opaque) and #39 (transparent) support Diffuse, Bumpmap, Specular, Emission maps.
The shader expects four textures on its input: diffuse, bump, specular and emission texture plus one numeric parameter which defines the intensity of the specular effect.

- _emission maps. are textures which defines areas which not react to the lights directions and not react to the lights colors. Emissive maps or glow maps, also known as self-illumination maps, are used to make surfaces appear like they are emitting light. Glow maps are blended additively over a texture, so areas which do not glow at all should be pure black on the glow map, and any brighter colors will appear to be emitting light. A very saturated emission map will have a very different visual effect than a grey emission map. Normally emission maps are gray.
The value of the pixels on the emission/ glow map will dictate how bright each pixel glows, relative to any other input values you include, like a new node. So black equals a value of zero (no glow), and white equals upper glow. The hues you use in the map are not the hues you'll see glow - this hues are added to the colors which result from the other maps and the light sources - that's straight forward enough. Call it a "glow mask" if you like but the texture Image should end with "_emission" (without quotes).
Example texture name: carlights_emission.png
Last edited by XNAaraL on Sun May 07, 2017 1:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ems
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Re: Changing green specs to something less glossy.

Post by Ems »

To my understanding, gloss is the surface of finish, a different kind of specmaps (like cars with metallic paint, the shimmery metallic is the specularity, the lacquer would be gloss), and emissivity is literally glow, as glow in the dark, light source, but not reflected light. Thus gloss maps that games use more frequently now are useless to us.

Like on this one, http://sta.sh/04n3iu2awq5 R could be environmental map mask (or at least what I used for that), G specular, B gloss, A emissive. So in general all of this is specularity but each layer is different aspect of it? Eventually, I'm mistaking gloss for roughness??
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XNAaraL
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Re: Changing green specs to something less glossy.

Post by XNAaraL »

Ems wrote:To my understanding, ....
Right. I has muddle 'glow' and 'gloss'. ( I blame Google translator: https://translate.google.es/#en/es/glow%0Agloss )
Abstract:
Your statement (about "specular gloss maps") is true (right) ... my statement was false (wrong).

More informations ... about (specular) gloss maps: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_ ... cular_Maps

XPS :(
Image
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