Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Galemp on September 26, 2003, 08:16:28 pm
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For the FS1 ships, anyway.
http://www.fileplanet.com/dl.aspx?/3dactionplanet/hlp/hosted/fsport/shine_fs1.zip
I've gone for subtlety here. You'll notice everything looks somewhat nicer without being overpowering. The tech room looks harsh but in-game it's better.
I still say the shine effect is much too strong, but if I made the maps any darker I'd lose all the detail. Bobboau, I beg of you, PLEASE tone this down! I'd like things to look as they were in FS2 with some slight highlights here and there, not completely soaked in light.
FS2 shine maps should be quicker and easier since they're smaller and less complex. I don't have a release date for them, though. :blah:
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Hopefully these will be unnecessary soon..
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why would they be unnesisary?
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Screenies?
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And answer the question, I'm curious!
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They'll always be necessary because Bob's code treats all textures as shiny by default, surely. Thinks like the Perseus' cockpit will be more shiny than the rest, and this is the purpose of shinemaps, as I understand it.
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I second the screenies request.
I want to see how it looks before I spend 8.7 years downloading it...
Although the shots themseves take about half that time.
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:yes:
Well done mate, the Port's gonna look great. :)
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Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
I still say the shine effect is much too strong, but if I made the maps any darker I'd lose all the detail.
You know, You can use the command line to adjust the brightness. Try this setting, It was Icefire's and I like the effect:
-spec_exp 11 -spec_point 0.6 -spec_static 0.8 -spec_tube 0.4
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I tried it last nighte, and I don't want to downplay the value of GE's work, but I don't like it.
There are only a couple of occasions when you've taken use of the ability to color the shine and most of the maps are so toned down they leave the fighters without any metalic shine.
I know you don't like the extreme whiteness of shines, but this is only the top of the light curve in direct sun light. Toning that down alone would be good.
In space metalic things have to glow like they are emmanating light.
A thought occured to me, that would best discribe my reaction: "Heh, it's like shine parts added to a ship, just as with glowmapping".
Which is the reason why I don't like it. The glowmapping stuff was great as it was done.
However shinemapping shouldn't concentrate on just parts of a ship. In this essence, whereas glowmapping was adding key detail parts to a ship, shine mapping is a major overhaul IMHO.
I don't know wheter you like really mat colors, but I think even with all the paint on the fighters the light would still penetrate and get reflected.
Look at the FS1 techroom animations of the ships.
They did show of a lot of shine.
The problem could reside in the fact that too much light gets reflected even in low angle, so a little tweaking could be necessary to the code.
Metalic fighters like the Apollo, Medusa, Athena, Hercules should be looking quite shiny with a distinct tint to the shine that was made by the paint. Whitish for the Apollo, a mud green with the Medusa, dark grey/sandy red for the Athena and a light gray/blue with the Herc.
That sandy effect could be used for dark craft. Instead unsing pure colors I think the original texture could be blended with a grainy one. So you have small spots where then light escapes like tiny needles and others where it's quite dull.
This color would also go well with the lower parts of those modern Vasudan armor.
A toned down light brownish reflection would go with Vasudan craft. Coupled with some red-blood and greenish-grey for machinery parts.
The Orion and the Arcadia with a blue-purple paint job should have a distinct metal blue tint.
I know it is easy to go off like that and retell just how good that would look, but I know it is a ton of work and the reason why I still highly apreciate the fact you've given a shot at the job.
I'd call your shine set a "shine-highlight mapping", that would be a good template for any future shine maps.
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ummm, how do you use these anyway?
do you just stick em in the same dir as the port?
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They'll work ok from the maps folder.
EDIT: Whoops, forgot they were in a VP. Just put it in the same folder as the port.
H
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hmm, the maps seem to be less bright to me.
but they reflect a little better, make ships look a little richer if ya know what i mean :)
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Originally posted by Flaser
Which is the reason why I don't like it. The glowmapping stuff was great as it was done.
However shinemapping shouldn't concentrate on just parts of a ship. In this essence, whereas glowmapping was adding key detail parts to a ship, shine mapping is a major overhaul IMHO.
I disagree. Shine maps, like glowmaps, can be used to hilight certain parts of a ship, with the base textures providing the most detail. Washing them out with light doesn't look so good, and the original textures are far more detiled than any shinemaps would be. Plus, if we're going to be getting more advanced tools like shaders and bumpmapping, the shine should definitely take a back seat.
In short, I don't want the shine mapping to be the ONLY special effect that you see.
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Originally posted by Flaser
A thought occured to me, that would best discribe my reaction: "Heh, it's like shine parts added to a ship, just as with glowmapping".
I'm of an opposite opinion. Metal is typically shiny. Paint on the other hand is much duller in reflectivity. On a ship, say the Fenris, only the exposed metal parts are going to appear "shiny", the painted parts while reflecting light as everything does is not going to appear "shiny" it will in fact be quite dull as compared to the exposed portions.
Using this reasoning, the main hull of the Hatshepsut would not have a shine map, only the "neck" would have a shine map
As I've messed around with shine maps here in the Lab, I've gotten the best results from selecting the exposed matal portions of a map and simply raising the gamma of the selection. This has the benefit of making the map "shinier" without overpowering the texture of or the map.
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Hmm...
Sample?
BTW how do we decide wheter a surface was painted or the metal just has that sort of color.
There are protective layers too, whose sole purpose is to protect the metal beneath - these could be very thin 'cause some of them can cost really much.
Finally I'd use the FS1 animations of the ships as a template.
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btw, what exactally do these do anyway?
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Originally posted by Drew
btw, what exactally do these do anyway?
They "tell" the game engine where to apply the specular (shine) effect.
Can you control the intensity of the effect by varying the rgb (greyscale) value?
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That's exactly what you can do.
You can even tint the reflected light with the color of the texture.
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SCREENIES!!!!!
* Note that the shining would be determined by the light sources!
The brighter the sun, the closer you are to it, the greater the shine....
Thing's don't usually shine much in space....look at videos that show a shuttles/satleites filmed from another shuttle/station..
they don't look too shiny..
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they do if you view them from the corect angle,
blinding in fact
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(http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ksickafoose/avatars/techherc00.jpg)
(http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ksickafoose/avatars/techherc01.jpg)
Herc1 veiwed from the techroom.
(http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ksickafoose/avatars/apollo.jpg)
Apollo veiwed ingame :D
:yes: :yes:
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They don't look nearly as good, IMO. I like the shine... These aren't shiny, they're... well, not shiny.
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I always thought from the early screens about specular effect that the shine effect was too strong: surely cool, but too strong, not fitting the fs2 style.
For this reason I like a lot your job, the herc is perfect, exactly how it should be
The only thing I don't like are the cockpits, they are definitively too specular, and the result is a bit weird (look at the apollo)
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Originally posted by KARMA
The only thing I don't like are the cockpits, they are definitively too specular, and the result is a bit weird (look at the apollo)
hmmmm i happen to like it
usually, you get kinda of a "blob" that may or may not take up the whole cockpit, depending on the angle. i just took those screens from that angle to show the difference from regular spec. lighting.
youll really have to see it for yourself ingame, its much better i think :D
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Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
They don't look nearly as good, IMO. I like the shine... These aren't shiny, they're... well, not shiny.
That's what I was raving about in my post.
Beside I liked the shiny look more.
IMHO it is pesonal preferences wheter someone likes the shine or the reserved matte look of GE's shinemapping.
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The herc looks OK, but the Apollo :no:
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That's because of the lighting. That mission has a red sun, and due to FS2's lighting system all the shiney bits are saturated in bright red. :ick I did mention this. Perhaps normal lighting should be in the hue specified in the table, and shine lighting uncolored.
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In-game, though, there's almost no shining. I prefer the old one, this one barely looks any different than stock FS2.
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I agree UT, though I see it as a template for shine highlighting.
BTW GE, I think if you were in a system with a red sun everything would indeed be Red. However have you tried shooting past some red craft like that? It's amaizing to watch as only parts of the craft are illuminated by the white light of a Kayser.
Try fiddling around with a pure led lamp. Everything indeed would look like that. If you think playing a mission in an environment like that is a major s***, than ask Bob for lighting to be implemented for the nebula images, than you can fade and nullyfy the effect of the red sun.
BTW no.2 , Bobbau could have a look at the original lighting model to work in the same way.
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i like the shine maps, although they should be a bit more shiny overall. The cockpits now show their low poly counts (anyone up for modelling some better cockpits? :) ), which is the only negative thing about it.
Oh, and BTW: great job on the Satis freighter, that's exactly how i want shinemaps to be used :yes: :yes:
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Correct me if I'm on the wrong track here, but couldn't the ships be made more shiney simply by increasing the overall brightness of the shine map itself in a paint program?
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
The cockpits now show their low poly counts )
*cough* GTB Athena:ick
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That's my favorite craft, don't you dare...
:)
BTW IMHO it looked better with its base texture as its shinemap.
Of cource this is a matter of tastes.
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The apollo cockpit is much too red, I think. It seems like glowy colored cockpits goes along with experimental terran ships and shivans, more than standard ships like the apollo.
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He already said that was because of the red sun... :doubt:
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The look is all right.
You're just simply unused to seeing it like that.
Now before you start ranting about how it's not good, take an example.
Plants are green. Right?
It's 12 PM. Night.
Now please try to convince me, Martian who just stepped on Earth and sees plants for the first time that they are green.
I would anser: "But they are all black!!"
You're used to seeing FS ships in white diffused light.
You think thereby that a red ship with an amber cockpit can't be a proper Apollo.
See the same Apollo in the light of a white star. I would look O.K. superb.
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What? We're talking that it's not shiny. Duhhhhh
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Uhm...that was what I kept saying...err...writting from the first place.
Although what I commented was Raa Tor'h's red sun.
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hmmm, how come my herc1 looks nothing like drews? could you show/send/tell me which, (custom?) textures, glowmaps, shine maps and command codes your using on that?
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so far, the Fs port ships are teh only ones shinemapped....
look at the first post of the topic too get the maps, then drop it into the same dir as the port and run it as a mod....
of that dosnt make it work, you might not have a good enough GPU
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gpu only maters if you are useing the HT&L build
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last time i checked, only radeons 7500 and up supported shaders of any kind....
if he has somthing like a vodoo 3 i doubt it would shade any....
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but... were not useing shaders, yet
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would you mind telling me what we are using? (or point me to a thread or sumthing plz)
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well we were useing a software T&L system that we had entierly under our controle, I added a specular element to this lighting model (look in the enormus specular thread) currently we are upgradeing to a fixed function hardware T&L system, after that is done we will then look into vertex and pixel shaders.
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Originally posted by Bobboau
after that is done we will then look into vertex and pixel shaders.
:yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes:
scweet :D
"you, sir are a steel eyed missle man"
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If someone did the FS1 conversion of the FS2 ships from the port (u know, use the larger textures of the FS1 ships in FS2), then we could use these right?
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The Port does include the high-res FS1 textures.
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Originally posted by J3Vr6
If someone did the FS1 conversion of the FS2 ships from the port (u know, use the larger textures of the FS1 ships in FS2), then we could use these right?
there's no need converting anything, I did that right away when that d3d registry hack was first released:
I extracted all the large FS1 maps and dropped them in my FS2/data/maps folder and... that's it, you needn't doing anything else.
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I meant if someone is using the hi-res FS1 textures in FS2 via the registry hack (and the fun stuff Venom explained), does that mean we can download these shines and use them in FS2?
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Originally posted by J3Vr6
I meant if someone is using the hi-res FS1 textures in FS2 via the registry hack (and the fun stuff Venom explained), does that mean we can download these shines and use them in FS2?
that's what i'm doing :rolleyes: :D
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Anyone have any better in-game screenies? Heck, tech room screenies are still nice. ;) ;7
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Originally posted by Drew
last time i checked, only radeons 7500 and up supported shaders of any kind....
if he has somthing like a vodoo 3 i doubt it would shade any....
Im running a AMD Athlon XP 2400+
with 512 RAM
and a Radeon 9500
I think it should work, but for some reason FS2 loves to look butt ugly for me :( :p