Lighting Reflections
<div class="IPBDescription">Any way to soften a reflection texture</div>What i did was extrude a face and position the monitor around it and painted the face that is now extruded through the prop.
I tried regular and spots with variouse adjustments with angle,position and beam spread and can't seem to soften it enough to get the reflection to go away enough to get a satisfactory result. Any way of changing the opacity of an "existing" texture or am i fubared on this attemp?
<img src="http://www.super-nova-team.com/ns2/bast/monitor.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
I tried regular and spots with variouse adjustments with angle,position and beam spread and can't seem to soften it enough to get the reflection to go away enough to get a satisfactory result. Any way of changing the opacity of an "existing" texture or am i fubared on this attemp?
<img src="http://www.super-nova-team.com/ns2/bast/monitor.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Comments
Give it time, it'll probably be fixed later.
EDIT: It seems have to done the trick, thanks ray. Musta been a glitch in the last build but it's working now!
Give it time, it'll probably be fixed later.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sorry. Can you dumb that comment down for me, because I didn't get it?
function kaput.
try later.
The reflections are called specular highlights, basically every texture has a black and white bit that tells the game how reflective that part of the texture is, which lets you make scratches more shiny and recessed bits less shiny, that sort of thing. That's already in the game. However also, each light source in the game should have a slider which tells you how strong its reflections are. See specular highlights are basically calculated from lights, each light source is also used to calculate how the speculars work, if you look along a surface towards a light, the game says 'this light should be reflecting off this surface' and renders a sort of reflected glowing circle.
There should be a slider on the light entity that tells the game how bright that glowing circle is, so if you wanted you could turn it right down, and the game wouldn't make that light cause reflections, it would only cause diffuse illumination, meaning it makes the texture brighter where it hits it, the most basic form of lighting.
I didn't think such a feature existed in the Spark engine and I've not seen it in other world editors to date, maybe I'm looking in the wrong place or ignoring the function in other engines and such.
Yes the materials have a specular map but in my opinion it's unrealistic for a light source to change the specular values of a material. There is really no need.
on a side note, I'm pretty sure the ambient lights ignore specular (and all normals not just texture) and simply provide diffuse illumination.
It sounds like he's chatting crap.
.. don't go google it now either :P
/dig
:P
I didn't think such a feature existed in the Spark engine and I've not seen it in other world editors to date, maybe I'm looking in the wrong place or ignoring the function in other engines and such.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No it's just something that there really should be.
Specularity is separate from diffuse lighting, and it already changes based on the colour and intensity of the light, and ambient lights don't generate speculars at all, so you should really have a slider to control the specular intensity separate from the diffuse intensity.
I find it hard to imagine that there wouldn't be one eventually given that it's a fairly basic feature, as well as quite useful because you can make lights seem a lot brighter by making them the primary specular source in the room.
You also should be able to separate the colour of the speculars from the diffuse colour, because that effect can be useful sometimes, generally moreso on the material side but also sometimes on the light side.
Most of lighting in games is unrealistic, because it's far easier to just give someone who knows how to make it look good a bunch of unrealistic tools than it is to simulate everything photorealistically.
Which is why you don't link lights directly to light props, you usually want to position them some distance away from the source prop.
Sure? I would have thought most editors that do dynamic lighting and speculars would have the option, given that it's already being done, you just can't control it.
You have speculars of varying intensity, you have lights of varying brightness, you have lights and speculars separate, and you have the ability to change the colour of speculars.
So just plug the functionality into a few sliders, and suddenly you get a bunch more really good lighting options.
It isn't trivial, it's extremely useful. And infinitely more efficient than making a dozen different art sets. You can drastically change the look of a room with lighting, so if you want to have varied environments without having to make a million models, you can add a couple more lighting options.
Hence why I was asking if you were sure, as while it would surprise me greatly if other editors didn't have it, I can't say 'nuh uh I used all these ones and they have it'.
so Chris says the feature should exist but Tharandin doesn't understand it because he's never seen it?
Let me just clarify, the feature Chris speaks certainly can and does exist in the world of digital art and could of course be used to visually change the feel of a room. BUT, it's unrealistic for an omni light to change material properties. Once you start changing the specular ramp of a metal surface it's not really metal anymore.
If you want to create color wash sans specular the ambient light that already exists is perfect for it. More than so.
Wrong.
Chris is saying the feature should exist.
I don't understand why you would want to add the feature, nor need it in games. It's pointless and unnecessary. I can understand for making a visual still image of one scene, but your game is dynamic and this is not needed.
Anyways the ambient lighting was perfect for what i needed. thanks.
<img src="http://www.super-nova-team.com/ns2/lighting.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />