Debugging Fresnel Textures

[=Hollywood=]

Hi Arno,

Today I also discovered that there appears there may be a bug with the Fresnel Texture assignment from MCX.

If I assign GenFresnel.dds or any other texture, it exports a model and in the MDL you can see that it shows "GenFresnel.dds" within the MDL file but when you go into FSX the effect doesn't seem to work and when re-importing the MDL back into MCX the Fresnel Texture assigment box is empty...

It looks like a bug, I've dug into this over and over again testing it this afternoon and tonight and it appears I may have found a slight bug.

Cheers,
Dean.

Note: I just looked at the last MDL export and the GENFresnel.dds assignment isn't there, will check again in the morning and see if I can get the bloom going, but there is definitely something askew in the fresnel texture section ...

 

[arno]

Hi Dean,

Sounds like a bug, let me take a look. Fresnel textures are not used a lot, so it could be this was not noticed before.

 

[arno]

Hi Dean,

I think it was your mistake .

When adding a fresnel texture you also need to change the fresnel attributes of the material. The fresnel should be enabled for either diffuse, specular or reflection.

But to make things a little easier, I have now made it so that FresnelDiffuse is automatically set to true when you add a fresnel texture (that only happens if FresnelDiffuse, FresnalSpecular and FresnelReflection were all false before). When removing a fresnel texture these properties will automatically be set to false again.

 

[n4gix]

Using fresnel on the Diffuse is probably a "bad idea," Arno. I tried that the other day and couldn't figure out why all of a sudden all of the diffuse textures on my aircraft were very, VERY dark and shadowed...

...until I realized I'd accidentally selected Diffuse this time around.

Normally I use only Specular and Reflection for the fresnel_ramp.

 

[=Hollywood=]

Hi Arno,

Copy that, I had copied entries from a bad default FSX model. I see now where I went wrong, am testing again

I agree with Fr Bill, based upon default FSX models it might be better to set fresnel ramp reflection and specular to true rather than diffuse.

Then again I'm still learning about all this stuff

Ok, this is getting to be fun.

Arno quick question, any chance we could have a button for "set user default opaque" as an option in future? That way all materials etc except for texture can be replicated easily between materials that have windows

Okay back to learning more about this stuff...

Deano.

 

[arno]

Hi,

I picked diffuse as default since I saw that in many of the default trees. But given this feedback I'll change the default value.

 

[arno]

Dean,

Can you explain that extra button? I am not sure what you want it to do.

 

[=Hollywood=]

Actually I'm thinking an apply material button would be more what could be helpful, I think I've tracked down my bloom issues to the RGB values for the MDL and hence I'm only getting reflection in the windows without the bloom effect...

It appears that there's a certain combination of elements that appear to have to come together for something like reflective windows and bloom to be displayed in sim...

I think I'm 90% there but I'm now looking over the SDK's with regards to materials and how they work together...

Example:

a default buildings.bgl model = ambient and diffuse 0,0,0 values and specular values = 0,0,0 all give a nice bloom effect on a building but without reflections

a model with specular alpha = 150,150,150 for both ambient and diffuse give a reflective texture but it appears sans bloom

I'm digging deeper into this, but my suggestion is a button that says [apply reflection and bloom to object] or just reflection or just bloom could be useful...

Let me sleuth some more and I'll see what else I can figure out outside of having to generate a test in 3ds.

 

[arno]

Hi Dean,

I think what you want are a kind of templates to use for certain material types, is that correct? I think that is a nice idea. So have a template for materials with transparent texture, for materials with reflection texture, etc.

 

[=Hollywood=]

Exactly.

 

[arno]

That's on the wishlist for the tool already