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P3D v3 Specular Color Change (Solved!)

pinkjr

pinkjr

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1,233
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us-texas
Hi,

This is beating me senseless. I want to change the specular color of a semi-transparent texture to black so it doesn't shine at all. I make the change in MCX, then save the model, but when I open it again it defaults back to white? It's like it's not saving the specular color change.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong here!

Thanks,
David
 
Hello....

What textures (diffuse, light, and/or bump maps) are being used in conjunction with you changing the specular color? Is a Specular Map being used? Also, make sure the option, "IgnoreSpecularColor", within MCX is set to "False".
 
Diffuse is a transparent texture. Light map is the bloom effect with black background. No Specular texture, no bump texture. When I change specular color to black, the transparency shine disappears, which gets quite annoying at a distance when in presence of rain.
Light_Spec.jpg
 
Pyscen said:
Hello....

What textures (diffuse, light, and/or bump maps) are being used in conjunction with you changing the specular color? Is a Specular Map being used? Also, make sure the option, "IgnoreSpecularColor", within MCX is set to "False".
Click to expand...

I'm not able to find the "IgnoreSpecularColor" entry anywhere?
 
Hello...

I guess you were meaning it was already set to "False" then?

I'm not sure if the setting for "No base material specular" set to "True" will have anything to do with the color, but than again,... it might. Also, I'm wondering if a Specular Map has to be present in order to use the color as well. Maybe Arno can answer both of those.
 
You still have 50 as an entry to the 'specular level', you do not have a specular in the textures and you set ' no base material texture to true. That means you will still have a ' specular' of 50 in your 'runway bloom' texture.
 
In the picture you have your specular set to full shine.
Pyscen said:
Also, I'm wondering if a Specular Map has to be present in order to use the color as well. Maybe Arno can answer both of those.
Click to expand...
A specular texture, just like a mapped diffuse texture, supersedes pixel color and a given polygon will not display both for the same attribute. You may have a mapped diffuse texture and numerically defined specular levels, i do it all the time and I have several presets in the material attributes drop down. 20,20,20 is for military and non reflective surfaces, I've found that lower values remove definition. I use 40,40,40 for things like houses, 150,150,150 for most objects like cars, 200,200,200 for polished items like jets and 250,250,250 for shiny glass. Incidentally you can tweak these values to get a color streak as the reflection, you can focus or blur the streak using some of the other specular/reflection settings.
 
Ok, tried bumping up (and down) the specular level and that did not work. Will try Rick's method next. Nevertheless, why is MCX not saving the specular color selected? It seems to work in MCX when it is changed.
 
Alright guys....another one for the books. Thanks Arno and Christopher Britton.

The issue lies within the world of MCX. It seems that whenever a material editor template is selected, it somehow tells XtoMDL to ignore the color parameters. The solution was to enter all desired parameters from scratch, and compile as normal.

I would have never guessed it. Thank you all for your help.

David
 
Allow me to clarify, the issue of changing specular color is solved.........but my runway light transparencies (with LODs), still seem to reflect light when at a distance under precipitation (they seem as if turned on during day!). Was told that a black specular would solve this.....but it doesn't. They work fine under clear weather though.
 
pinkjr said:
Alright guys....another one for the books. Thanks Arno and Christopher Britton.

The issue lies within the world of MCX. It seems that whenever a material editor template is selected, it somehow tells XtoMDL to ignore the color parameters. The solution was to enter all desired parameters from scratch, and compile as normal.

I would have never guessed it. Thank you all for your help.

David
Click to expand...
@pinkjr
Hi there, how exactly did you remove the light glow from your taxi light? I was able to remove on the day time because of the specular but can you please rephrase for me the options you used in MCX to have full transparency?
Thank you.
 
Hi Francis, I think I just manually set no base material specular = TRUE....without previously using a material template. My issue was an MCX issue.
 
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