I am using the suggested carbody material. I have been playing with specular settings on the body but it seems like no matter what settings I use I get wierd edges on poly lines. Even adding a mesh smoother which makes the model rediculously high poly doesn seem to help. I guess im not sure if this is an issue with the spec settings or the model. I would tend to think model, but who knows. Smoothing groups are correct, I have exported with gmotor normals. Model was built in quads. Here is a pic of the LF fender. View attachment 984 Here is a pic of the roof where the spec is fine View attachment 985 Any ideas how to smooth the model/spec out?
judging from the incredibly small picture, looks like you might have a doubled vertice on there, or you need to tune normals. Post a bigger picture for more accurate guess .
Well I run at highest resolution, so that is the biggest I can make the picture. Its not intended to be a vehicle teaser, because this will never see rf2, just wanted to highlight the problem area. As far as the actual issue: no doubled verts. I lowered the specular power and the sharp lines go away on the edges, but it just doesn't look realistic. If you have looked at iracing cars, their specular lighting is superb, and I just cant get that effect so far in rf2. Here is an example from IR... View attachment 986
make sure the vertex paint for the body mesh is all one uniform color. Also, if you're using a normal map for the whole body, make sure theres no seam in the texture, and the spec map too.
Haha, yep, i learned the seam in the spec/bump map years ago. Never messed with vertex alphas on this model, but I checked just to be sure and they are all uniform. Ive tried a few other models and I get the same in game effect when using a high specular power. Appears its not a model issue, so much as it is just not working with the high specular levels. Id be curious to see if any of the art guys from isi have any idea on how to create specular effects like the one shown in the car above. In my opinion, isi engine specular levels just seem to wash the whole car out instead of being more focal like iracings. Has anyone else had any luck getting their specular effects to look like that in rf?
So after another 2 days of playing with specular levels/colors/settings, smoothing, etc. Im still at a standstill. Can someone comment on how to make a black car have the same specular effect as a lighter colored car with the suggested body material. On a grey car, the specular is more blown out, and on a black car, it is very focused. I am able to make a lighter colored car look how I want it, but as soon as you go to a dark color(black) I get the poly lines showing up like pictured above. HDR is turned off btw, so I know thats not why a white car looks good.
I am having similar problems with light versus dark cars. The spec seem higher on light cars. Also the refectiveness of the cubemap seems to be different depending on the color of the car. Both of these cars use the same material and alpha channel. The white appears glossy and the black is almost flat.
toebee; Just one question. Actually for both of you. When creating the cars livery, How do you save it to DDS? What I mean is, Do you flatten the finished livery, Copy and pasd to alpha channel, Then save to DDS. That NASCAR pic is tailing me something. I just need it confirmed.
All of my skins/livery's are done by flattening layers> I have an alpha already in the .psd file, so I never really mess with it. The problem also exists with TGA skins. Once I flatten, I just save as .dds with the nvidia photoshop tools. DXT5 w/interpolated alpha. Toebee's picture highlights EXACTLY what I am saying with the light colored cars having a much higher specular effect then the black ones. I think that the poly line issue would dissappear if the black cars could have a more pronounced specular effect.
Getting the same issue. Textures just a colour with alpha channel saved as DXT5. View attachment 1024 View attachment 1025
Try not to use full 0-0-0 black, but instead dark blue or grey. I have also completely separate reflection alpha channel for dark and light cars just to have more control. Then there are of course different settings for glossy and matte paints too. Here is an example. Cube map can also make difference, I use one that came with rF2. I don't remember my specular settings right now, sure there might be a need for adjusting. But I want to show the importance of using grey instead black, and how the alpha channel is set up. For light painted cars I have the alpha almost as dark as the doors in this example, depending on how "new" paint I want. Not saying this is the way how it should done, and this can even look like crap, but just to give some hints on this topic.
So the Alpha is a grey scaled copy of the paint scheme? If so this is the reason why the white car has so much more shine to it then the black one has. The painted scheme should never be copied to the alpha channel.
Ok, what have you got going there? Cop chase mod? Im in! haha. As far as the issue, I still don't see it being solved. The fact is you can change the alpha's all you want, but when you save a black car anda white car with alpha's that are identicle, I would expect a near-same reflection. I understand that to make it more realistic, you should change the alpha, but its almost like it's doing it on its own, even if the alpha's are identicle. Also, your not getting the issue with hot spotting on the poly edges because that car has basically 0 curves in the body line. Like I showed in first post, my specular looks great on the hood/roof, but in the fenders on a dark car, its like the black paint is absorbing the specular effect. On light cars the specular is more blown out. My main problem is, that I need to get rid of those hotspots on all my edges to make the specular look right. I'm starting to think unless ISI is willing to help out I'm going to have to make all future models stupid high poly in the rounded areas.
Yes it is a WIP model for car chase mod I looked at your pictures and the fender part definitely looks odd. It sure does look like that there is something funny going on in the mesh, and not so much of a specular issue. But you still should use completely different reflection alpha channel for black and white cars. And like D.Painter said earlier it is not enough just only to copy the diffuse map to use as alpha, but it has to be hand made to achieve the desired appearance. And separately for all different cars with different colors. In real world, various colors have all different optical characteristics. White and black are extreme examples and need completely different approach to make each of them look "real".
I thought about doing the alpha channel like that, but I hope there is a better solution. We have over 50 something skins. As far as the spec and the mesh goes, I doubt there's anything wrong with Bisons model. I get the same outcome if I go over 25-30 on the specular level.
Yeah, im fairly confident that there is nothing wrong with the model. I have tried several other models and as toebee said, it is an issue with specular powers over 30ish. Unfortunately, the high specular powers about 60-80 are the most realistic look in my opinion. And think about it. It's just not realistic to ask EVERY person who ever creates a skin for the game/mod to hand create an alpha map and have it retain the quality. This is an issue that ISI needs to handle, or at least help us with a work around.
Found a kind of quick fix for the reflection alpha map, copy the diffuse map, paste to alpha channel, with alpha channel selected invert the image. You will still have to play around with the different areas to get the reflection from white to black to balance, and to adjust the strength. But it should be quicker than recreating an alpha from scratch. Also, I'm not getting those specular issues you guys are, and my spec power is about 75 I think.
That's is basically how it works in my example above. That car is good example because it has both black and white painted parts. But if your diffuse map has shading (shadows, highlights) I would not recommend inverting the colors for alpha. It gives odd results where body parts in shadows are more reflective than parts in sunlight. If you are working just with plain colors (not any shading) then it is easier and faster to build alpha maps.
So, that workaround does affect the shine, but doesnt address the actual specular issue that my original post was meant to ask about. I took a few screens, note that this is in ASR, so using RF1 graphics engine, but results and issue are the same whether its rf1 or rf2, ets. First pic is the same truck with a hand made alpha on the left and just plain color alpha on the right. While the black is shinyer with the handmade alpha, the specular hotspots still exist on poly lines. View attachment 1034 This pic is a white truck on the left, and a black truck on the right. Note, the white is not a pure white and the black is actually a dark grey. The white truck's secular is still much brighter, hiding the hotspots. View attachment 1035
