[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
It'd be nice if there was a generic one like suggested though - it'd make things easier on those of us who want to use it without going to the trouble of making a map.

Using the standard texture as a shinemap, too has proven to work sometimes quite well. Leave it as it is, if you want to power it down, use the command line parameters.

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Galemp

Let's just have it turned off by default, unless it finds a spec map; the same way that glowmaps are handled.

That would look ridiculous.  Only certain vessels would be spec-mapped then. Or worse yet, only portions of vessels.

[Flaser]

Personally I liked them really much.

The reason could be that when it came out I was playing the FS-Port and it looked uber-cool with most of the ships.

The reason is that their base texuters were quite good shine maps - lot of exposed metal, shiny paintjobs, the whole thing seemed to fit.

So if I finally manage to get the hang of it (or someone else gives a cent for what I'm saying) I'd do it by removing none-shiny parts from the base texture and only then add to it.
So it would be general highlighting instead GE style specular detail.
Finally I think the coloring ability of shine mapping is wastely undderrated.
Nothing looks as good as an Athena with a bronze paint job that reflect with a a copper tint.

[Drew]

Originally posted by Flaser

Nothing looks as good as an Athena with a bronze paint job that reflect with a a copper tint.

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Woolie Wool
Unless I specmap every texture I use, it looks awful.

Good things always take work. I appreciate your sentiments, but going back to the old way is both cowardly and unappreciative. Just put in the effort and make the specmaps - as Venom pointed out, they're really not that difficult. And geez, talk about shoving someone's hard work back in his face.

[Turnsky]

indeed... just specmap the parts that need it... and perhaps leave it out of the joints of the hull-plating, machined parts, Etc...

it's the one of the best things to come out of the SCP since glowmapping..

[Bobboau]

the comand line options will be reintigrated into TH&L by the next relese, the levels can be fine tuned to match all your personal opinions, includeing no specular at all, by defalt everything is set to 1,  so this gives modders the ability to have a full range of values to work with, the only thing that was realy arbitrary was the specular power value (note this refers to the 'size' of the highlight), it was set to 16 by defalt, this setting made it small enough that it was visable, but large enough that it didn't have major aproximation errors, ships with a higher poly count can aford to have a higher 'power' level.
things general look better with even a poor spec map, and the base texture it'self is at the least a poor spec map (some instances a great one, like the blue texture on the orion),
if you are testing a HTL build I would epect you to tolorate a few details that have yet to be resolved (as we are still trying to fix some major problems, look at the knossos in any HTL build for an example), other wise you have had from nearly the start the ability to tone down or to completly disable specular lighting to sute you're desiers,
if you'r too lasy to set the comand line options then I'm sorry, I can't help you. :/

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Bobboau
the comand line options will be reintigrated into TH&L by the next relese, the levels can be fine tuned to match all your personal opinions, includeing no specular at all,[SNIP]...
if you are testing a HTL build I would epect you to tolorate a few details that have yet to be resolved (as we are still trying to fix some major problems, look at the knossos in any HTL build for an example), other wise you have had from nearly the start the ability to tone down or to completly disable specular lighting to sute you're desiers,
if you'r too lasy to set the comand line options then I'm sorry, I can't help you. :/

Basically that's my point of view. The current HT&L is bleeding edge code. If something doesn't work properly you don't ask for the whole thing to be thrown out as useless. Instead post a bug report and go back to 3.5.5 if you find it unusable.

Keep up the good work bob (and the rest of the coders for that matter).

[Black Wolf]

Why is specular lighting still so popular?

Because it's still so cool?

[Carl]

if the ships are made of metal, which i am assuming they are, then they should be shiny.

[Styxx]

I love the effect, and it looks bloody great with MT ships, even without specialized specular maps.

[Gloriano]

Originally posted by Styxx
I love the effect, and it looks bloody great with MT ships, even without specialized specular maps.

[IceFire]

Try these settings - most people like em .

-spec_exp 11 -spec_point 0.3 -spec_static 0.5 -spec_tube 0.05

I agree, keep the specular in.  What we should do is get a set of maps for all FS2 ships like we did with the glowmaps.  Harder work yes but worth it in the end.

[J3Vr6]

GE was supposed to do that, and had done it for the FS1 ships, I believe.  Many people complained that they weren't specular enough or something.  I don't know, I never saw them in action to give an opinion.

In any case, I have to agree w/ IceFire.  A set for all FS2 ships would rock.

[Flaser]

Actually in my words what he has done was a superb shine detail highlighting.

So in other words he only made a couple of parts of ships shiny.
This is a matter of tastes.

Turnsky: This is exactly the opposit of what I think of the issue - rather than adding specular light to certain parts I think it should be kept for most of the textures (*Vasudans are hard call though, you'd have to figure out a plastic look, a grainy texture IMHO, even composites shine in direct sunlight) and substacted from those parts that are definitly non-metalic.
Pain would reduce shineness of course, but take a look at some space shuttle photos: even that would make them shine in certain angles. Going for special grainy textures would be good (I mean that only the shine map should be grainy!).

The most important part IMHO is then coloring the resultant spec map.

Basicly the method should be the following:
-Isolate glowy parts (GE or big shine style)
-Assign an apropiate texture to them (non metalic parts should be blended with an apropiate texture)
-Color the result to the reflected light's color.

[Carl]

what makes me upposed to the whole shine map thing is that we already have texture maps and glow maps. once we put bump mapping in we'll have 4 seperate maps for each ship, and that's not including the LODs.

[Flipside]

Yes, but Bobboau is working on a system where you only need one file, possibly the current DDS support, where each 'layer' of the image is a different map,

Flipside

[Bobboau]

actualy I was only thinking about it and it would be more like a more robust version of the txtr data chunck of the pof
I havn't actualy done anything solid in this regad

[IceFire]

That'd be wicked.  One layer eh?  What is DDS btw and how would I work that from say Photoshop?

[Carl]

if HT&L makes the game go as fast as they claim it does, maybe we could just get rid of the last one or two LOD textures. that would cut down the number of files a bit.