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FsX and chrome textures

W

Welmu

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5
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finland
I have such a problem that i need to make a chromed spinner in a repaint, but i haven't been able to figure out, how chromed textures (or chrome effect) is done in FsX. I have been reading the SDK but it's not too good, because it has been written for gMax and i'm painting with PSP. I just mean that the SDK tells something about enabling some chrome effect, but that's in gMax.

First i tried to do it so that i put some gray gradient color for the spinner in the real texture and then edited the specular texture to get the chrome effect, but the result was only shiny grey spinner, not chromed.
I then tried to copy the specular texture and alpha from a default plane, but the spinner still didn't look like chromed. :banghead:

Does this "chrome" outlook of some texture somehow depend on the model, does it have to be enabled in the model to work? Or is there some trick to do it, like using some specific colors in the specular texture and alpha?

Ville
 
Welmu said:
Does this "chrome" outlook of some texture somehow depend on the model, does it have to be enabled in the model to work? Or is there some trick to do it, like using some specific colors in the specular texture and alpha?

Ville
Click to expand...

That depends on whether the model was compiled with FS9 MakeMDL.exe or with the new FSX X2MDL.exe program.

If the model is FSX compiled, then yes, special Property settings for the Material must be enabled for it "Chrome" to display properly. There are two ways Reflection map values can be displayed in-game. The material settings in allow users to define whether those Alpha channel values are used to generate either a “gloss” or a “chrome” effect. The “gloss” algorithm takes the per-pixel values of the diffuse and environment maps and adds them to generate an end result pixel value which always ends up being lighter than the original value. This is useful for painted surfaces which would look less like chrome and more like a shiny surface.
 
Thanks alot for your response Bill. :)

Most probably the model for which i'm doing the paint has been compiled using the new makemdl and the designers haven't enabled that chrome effect for the spinner. It seems that the best i can do is some kind of light grey shiny spinner.

Ville
 
Chrome Surfaces

The nonplusultra between the right material settings esspecially the
color (mid to dark grey in base) and heavy specular with high gloss
is the environment map. With this map you can damage the visual
aspect if done wrong. I recommend you try Terragen 2 demo (search
at google) with that you can render beautiful skymaps at every day
and every weather aspect. Yes it generating a complete realistic but
synthetical sky. Good tool, no pay. Good efficiency :).

Greetings
 
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