ChiefBrex's WIPs List - Current Projects: Rigel Class & TOS Pack (03.05.17)

[Adonis]

Okay, tried all this, and still nothing. I think the Rigel Class will have to go without speculars, or I'm going to have to use black and white specs, because nothing is working, and it's only pissing me off to the point where I'm about to scrap this project.

Dude, take a breather and catch me on skype, and we'll see what wrong ;)

[moed]

Brex, you also might want to talk to Bones, he's had success with colored spec maps.

[CyAn1d3]

Brex, you also might want to talk to Bones, he's had success with colored spec maps.

I never did...

[Bones]

[suddenly awakes] AAAAyee, success it was I'll have to go through last few pages to see what's the problem ;)

EDIT:

I could never get rendered ships to display any level of specularity in MAX but they appear just fine in BC ;) have you tried running this ship in BC yet ?

[ChiefBrex]

No, I haven't. It still needs to be hardpointed and scripted.

[Adonis]

[suddenly awakes] AAAAyee, success it was I'll have to go through last few pages to see what's the problem ;)

EDIT:

I could never get rendered ships to display any level of specularity in MAX but they appear just fine in BC ;) have you tried running this ship in BC yet ?

No, I haven't. It still needs to be hardpointed and scripted.

Basically, he is having trouble setting up the speculars in max (which doesn't mean they won't work in the game itself).

[moed]

[suddenly awakes] AAAAyee, success it was I'll have to go through last few pages to see what's the problem ;)

EDIT:

I could never get rendered ships to display any level of specularity in MAX but they appear just fine in BC ;) have you tried running this ship in BC yet ?

Agreed!

I remember reading posts from several different modders through the years where they also didn't have success with specs in Max but worked fine in BC.

You should maybe give it a look-see in BC first even before scripting/hard pointing. It might just be working 

[ChiefBrex]

Not sure how to get it ingame without hardpoint and scripts lol

[CyAn1d3]

Export the ship to nif, then plug it in place of a mod you know works, make sure you back the mod model before you replace it with the reigel. Make sure the models are named the same so you dont have to mess with scripts.

I call it a dummy test, I do it to make sure the model damages proper etc. before I start textures.

.. Bones has some explaining to do about colored specs....

[Bones]

All I do to get colored speculars is turning them from greyscale to rgb 32-bit and make completely black alpha channel (at the time tga is saved as rgb 32-bit, photoshop automatically creates white alpha channel - now I'm sure it doesn't work in BC anyway but I like to keep it black ) then it's up to you what you want in color and what not;)

You can always just copy your diffuse map and rename it from _glow to _specular, open specular, clear alpha channel and then play with levels, exposure, contrast, brightness etc. etc. to make nice speculars (drawback is that colors will become really harsh for your eyes so I recommend lowering saturation considerably ;) )

[ChiefBrex]

Adonis said if they don't look good in BC, I should go and make them a little lighter. He also suggest that I include some occlusion and shadowing effects on the diffuse map to get the textures more depth.

[genty]

These are my spec map settings:



Speculars were also the one map I had the hardest time with....  

I noticed one thing, only the second texture in that pic is applied to the model as shown by the triangle in the corners of the box. The other 3 textures aren't applied to the model. Did you import some of the pieces into the scene?
Try Reappling the textures to the model pieces using the ones in the material editor and see what happens.

[ChiefBrex]

I noticed one thing, only the second texture in that pic is applied to the model as shown by the triangle in the corners of the box. The other 3 textures aren't applied to the model. Did you import some of the pieces into the scene?
Try Reappling the textures to the model pieces using the ones in the material editor and see what happens.

Uhm, no. none of the ship pieces were imported to the scene. The file I used to set up the scene was directly from one of the save files. All the textures should be applied.

[genty]

I'd try reapplying them anyway just in case. As I said before, according to the pic of the material editor, only one of the textures is applied. Could end up being a bug from using the save file.

[CyAn1d3]

I'd try reapplying them anyway just in case. As I said before, according to the pic of the material editor, only one of the textures is applied. Could end up being a bug from using the save file.

This.

Good catch genty

[ChiefBrex]

Ya'll just want me to work on the Rigel, never finishing it lol

[mckinneyc]

Ya'll just want me to work on the Rigel, never finishing it lol

She is some fine work Chief, and a credit to your skill and perseverance. Would be a great shame if she weren't finished

[ChiefBrex]

Genty was right. Apparently the textures were not being applied to the mesh. Now I can see the speculars. They're very subtle, but they're there.

Edit: I swear to God, I keep running into road blocks. Now I finally get the mesh's textures fixed. I scaled it to LC's Ambassador and turned it around. So, I'm trying to get it loaded in MPE, and MPE crashes every time I try to add the ambassador global template...Don't know what else to do.

[flarespire]

what version of max are you using, cuz the newer versions of 3ds max seem to bugg out the .nif export and break it, also did you change the dropdown for games to star trek bridge commander?

[ChiefBrex]

what version of max are you using, cuz the newer versions of 3ds max seem to bugg out the .nif export and break it, also did you change the dropdown for games to star trek bridge commander?

I use Max 2010, because I can't find anything older. And yes, I did.