Author Topic: Environmental mapping channel in -shine maps not working anymore  (Read 86 times)

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Offline Col. Fishguts

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Environmental mapping channel in -shine maps not working anymore
While working on some custom models, i noticed that the environmental mapping effect via the alpha channel in -shine maps seems to be gone.

At first I thought it might be due to my DDS conversions, but checking in the current mediaVPs, I see the same there. The cockpit glass only shows the specular highlight of the local sun, but there are no reflections from the nebulae.
This happens on my machine both with FSO builds from 22.X/23.X and 24..0 (haven't checked further back), environment maps are not disabled in the launcher.
Was the feature deprecated for -shine maps when moving to PBR, or did I accidentally disable env mapping on my end?


"I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it." - D. Lynch

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Offline wookieejedi

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Re: Environmental mapping channel in -shine maps not working anymore
While working on some custom models, i noticed that the environmental mapping effect via the alpha channel in -shine maps seems to be gone.

At first I thought it might be due to my DDS conversions, but checking in the current mediaVPs, I see the same there. The cockpit glass only shows the specular highlight of the local sun, but there are no reflections from the nebulae.
This happens on my machine both with FSO builds from 22.X/23.X and 24..0 (haven't checked further back), environment maps are not disabled in the launcher.
Was the feature deprecated for -shine maps when moving to PBR, or did I accidentally disable env mapping on my end?

Looks like you have the `Disable Post processing` box checked? Highly recommend enabling post processing since a lot of the modern FSO shaders need it to work properly :)

 

Offline Col. Fishguts

  • voodoo doll
  • 211
Re: Environmental mapping channel in -shine maps not working anymore
Ah yes, forgot to mention that I disabled postprocessing for this screenshot, since the tonemappers seem to wash out a lot of the shinemap effect, so it's more visible with postprocessing disabled.
But the env maps are not working for me with or without postprocessing.
"I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it." - D. Lynch

Visit The Babylon Project, now also with HTL flavour  ¦ GTB Rhea

  

Offline Col. Fishguts

  • voodoo doll
  • 211
Re: Environmental mapping channel in -shine maps not working anymore
I did some more testing. When I save the -shine map in a format without alpha channel (e.g. DXT1), the model look the same as when using a map with data in the alpha channel.
This used to work differently, shine maps without alpha channel used to result in very glossy ships due to
Quote
Available -shine map without alpha channel. The level of environmental reflection is based on the luminance derived from the -shine map RGB values.


So I guess this feature was removed when moving to the PBR render pipeline, with the alpha channel in the reflectance map taking its role?

EDIT: Found it in an old thread from Swifty:  https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=89551.0

Quote
Legacy specular maps, known as shine maps, are still accepted by appending “-shine” to texture maps. Legacy specular maps do not support gloss channels as the alpha channel is specified to attenuate environment map reflections. The RGB channels are not gamma corrected. A constant gloss factor will be applied to the corresponding model instead of per-pixel gloss.

So everything works as specified, I was just not up to date how the old formats are handled nowadays.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2024, 01:17:59 pm by Col. Fishguts »
"I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it." - D. Lynch

Visit The Babylon Project, now also with HTL flavour  ¦ GTB Rhea