Specular map problem

[kitcat81]

Guys thank you both so much once again, a lot of useful tips and I will give the Intel plugin a try too. To make it simple I save my own textures as DXT1(when I don`t need alpha or high quality) or DXT5(if I need better quality or alpha). And editted vanilla normals and specular I saved as 3dc as it was suggested in some tutorial but I will try another ways too. The texture shows up in NifSkope just as Perraine said, and all saved changes immediatelly appear there but as it was mentioned the gloss becomes much more intense in game.

I`ll also try inverting the picture to see how it looks in game. The technical part is solved for now.

 

But the specular map is still a bit misterious. I understand the gloss map idea. It allows to make the item glossy or matte but I don`t fully understand the concept of 2 channels and how to use it. The alpha channel is very different as it just makes parts of the picture less or more transparent. I know how to use it, you just paint in greyscale. Darker parts will be more transparent. White parts non transparent at all.

 

I`m trying to understand how should I paint the gloss map, what colours to use and where to paint...in the main layer or directly in the green-red channels.

Let`s say I want to add a very glossy glass effect to some side of my cube and to make another side very matte. How do I do this? Will making one side bright yellow and another side black create the required effect?

 

I`ve also noticed that light specular textures make items more glossy and dark specular textures make them matte. But this is all without adjusting any channels. When I needed matte effect for my mat I painted the main layer with dark blue, saved as DXT5 and it worked.

 

And all vanilla specular textures look purple and it confises me..Why are they all purple.

Edited January 2, 2017 by kitcat81

[Deleted15964729User]

The thing is you are thinking in a 2D image editing perspective coming from editing things in Photoshop etc. I have no idea of how FO4 devs made their textures but most likely they were generated in an app such as Substance Painter using their own custom shader. Also nevermind the colors, just look at the values, cos that's pretty much all it is to the game in the end.

 

Are all the vanilla speculars purple? That seems odd, most are greenish (which gives a matte roughness kind of look in-game). Although I don't have the Nvidia plugin at all so my textures all open with the Intel open. However if I invert the colors I get a purple look instead. So try inverting them if you are opening with Nvidia or just avoid using it at all for FO4. Light specular = higher RG(B) values more effect. Dark speculars lower values less effect. A value of 128 (which if my math is correct is half of 256 ;) ) should produce a neutral effect. Don't forget that the BGSM (material file) also decides a lot of things. Hell sometimes you might be better off changing the values in that file rather than actually edit the image file.

 

If you want something to be chrome you make the red channel high, it works as a metallic channel from the PBR-workflow. I don't really paint as much as you do in Photoshop, I suck at such artistry and mostly take a technical approach. But if I for example would like to add say a belt buckle or something like that I would edit the red channel directly after having placed it as a new layer or using a mask. Wouldn't touch the green channel much, perhaps lower it below 128.

 

Mentioned alpha as a lot of people has had problems with it, especially with the Intel plugin. That plugin asks if you want to copy transparency to alpha channel when you open a file that has it but doing this removes the transparency from view and not doing it temporarily breaks the file as it doesn't read the alpha channel at all. I handle this by making my edits in RGB so I have a better view of final results and then go to Layer -> Layer Mask -> From Transparency -> Name channel alpha and activate it (before saving the file). Here is two Photoshop actions for it, one for current layer and one for all layers: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ai4z0jNsozEnqPxC9iMg2aAko1ulEQ

[kitcat81]

Because I`m more like 2 D real life painter . Have a little experince in solidworks, but it`s different. I like to learn , just have have no proper examples of this maps. Somehow managed to create my own normal map, saved as dxt and it works fine now :dance: . Not something impressive ..., but for the first time it`s ok. Substance Software looks like a really good proffesional stuff for professionals.

 

So many adventures I already had with this file. Merged mershes in NifSkope, created a uv map in blender following some tutorial....The map was good but it could not be imported anywhere because new Blender refused to install the nif plugin. So I picked up another mesh that has full uv for each side and all again . :D

 

Yep, all vanilla specular maps extracted with BAE look either purple or purple-blue for me and washed out. The same as in this tutorial : http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/3611/?

May be that guy also used the nvidia plugin.

But at least it has no problems with transparency and does not require any twiking with it. It`s a pity nvidia has stopped updating it. It`s a good and easy to use tool and very nice for diffuse maps. Clicking any dds opens it as dds. I think that creating specular from scratch should work fine too, I just have no experince creating them from scratch. The plugin only breaks these new fallout 4 format that they use for specular and normals. It swaps channels or something else...That requires fixing.

 

Thanks a lot for some more useful tips :smile:. Reverting this map makes it rather yellow with some small green parts but the light and dark parts also get reverted wich seems wrong but I`m not sure. Wil try to load in game anyway.

Edited January 2, 2017 by kitcat81

[Perraine]

You don't need to know the technical details of file formats or anything about "channels". As mention, the colour Red is for "metallic" glossiness and the colour green is for "plastic" glossiness. the colour intensity when you paint an area can be between 0 <--> 255 of red green and blue (Blue is almost totally unused for anything in FO4, which why "most" specular maps look blueish/purplish) ) 0 of each is pure black and 255 of each is pure white. 128 is the "middle" and is the setting for most fabric to just barely have that "sheen" that most fabrics have.

 

So say for instance you were making an outfit consisting of:

 

Silk shirt - You would paint this one around 130 <--> 150 Green and around 100 or less Red

Cotton pants - You would paint these around 120 <--> 130 Red and Green

Leather belt - This you would paint this around 150 <--> 180 Green and around 130 Red

Metal belt buckle - This you would paint this around 180 <--> 220 Red and around 120 Green

Silk Tie - This you paint this around 180 Green and around 150 Red

 

Those are just rough estimates, but a bit of trial and error will get the result you want. You should end up with a specular map that has green, red, orange and yellow parts (plus some blue where you didn't paint anything) You can use the diffuse map or the normal map as the "template" to paint onto to make life easier (just remember not to save over it when you've done painting!

 

If you want a good vanilla example of the colour intensities and how they appear in game, open the Specular map for the Red Sequined Dress. You'll notice (or you should) that the texture is primarily blue, but has hundreds of scattered "dots" or red to yellow (mixture of red and green) that is to make the sequins "sparkle" like metal objects in game.

[kitcat81]

Great, great thanks for so detailed explanation . I feel myself silly but can you please tell me how do you do it technically? I know you use another program but knowing of the way doing it in another program can help me understand how should I do it in photoshop. There are many different settings and I`m not sure what way they can affect the specular map.

I can set this RGB settings for my brush and paint directly. Setting it 120 Red and Green and 0 Blue makes it greenish -yellow. If i understood everything correct it should make the texture look cotton matte. Am I right?

 

But i wonder what should I do if I already have a picture and want to turn it into a gloss map? Can I do this?

I also have chanel mixer in Photoshop that changes chanel settings for a layer. There are 3 outputs: red, green and blue. Each output has 3 settings - red, green and blue and a general setting which is normally zero. I can set there values from -200 to 200.

Can I set values to exiting picture to make it matte or glossy?

[Perraine]

The basics of colour in texture files is this - All colours, the entire spectrum, is made by what's sometimes known as an Additive Palette of Red, Green and Blue on a scale from 0 to 255. 0 being no colour (black) and 255 being full colour (white)

 

The game engine looks at every single pixel in the texture, and reads exactly how much Red, Green and Blue are in that pixel - So you may see a flat image that is "yellow", but the computer reads the image and see's 150 Red and 150 Green, that is the information stored in the "channels". So by adjusting the values in you colour picker you can make huge or subtle differences in the amount of Red and Green in each pixel, and therefore how Glossy or Dull each pixel is.

 

So in theory, yes you can use almost any image as a specular map, provided it's saved in the correct format, but the result may not be exactly what you'd like. The diffuse texture for Piper's Trench Coat for instance is Bright Red, so if you used that as the specular map, it would end up being very glossy in game, which wouldn't look right.

 

But you can make some alterations that will show in game, even if only a little. Say for instance a Leather Jacket - It would be a bit glossy say around 130 green and red, but, the creases and scratches would have removed some of the gloss in some areas, and the folds would make some areas, a little bit brighter - so what you might do is using "layers" is to put the diffuse texture (that shows the creases and scratches as darker or lighter areas) over the top of the specular map and adjust and blend it down so that those darker and lighter areas show up - Now you'll have a specular map that has some areas that might be 150 Red and Green, but the scratched parts might be only 90 or 100 Red and green, so it looks more realistic.

 

Bare in mind that the game only has a limited number of "lights" to use as reference for the colour, so it's very difficult to make the exceedingly subtle variations that we can see in real life. This is why most Specular Maps have very simple looking color combinations and very distinct Red, Green and Blue areas.

[kitcat81]

The basics of colour in texture files is this - All colours, the entire spectrum, is made by what's sometimes known as an Additive Palette of Red, Green and Blue on a scale from 0 to 255. 0 being no colour (black) and 255 being full colour (white)

 

The game engine looks at every single pixel in the texture, and reads exactly how much Red, Green and Blue are in that pixel - So you may see a flat image that is "yellow", but the computer reads the image and see's 150 Red and 150 Green, that is the information stored in the "channels". So by adjusting the values in you colour picker you can make huge or subtle differences in the amount of Red and Green in each pixel, and therefore how Glossy or Dull each pixel is.

 

So in theory, yes you can use almost any image as a specular map, provided it's saved in the correct format, but the result may not be exactly what you'd like. The diffuse texture for Piper's Trench Coat for instance is Bright Red, so if you used that as the specular map, it would end up being very glossy in game, which wouldn't look right.

 

But you can make some alterations that will show in game, even if only a little. Say for instance a Leather Jacket - It would be a bit glossy say around 130 green and red, but, the creases and scratches would have removed some of the gloss in some areas, and the folds would make some areas, a little bit brighter - so what you might do is using "layers" is to put the diffuse texture (that shows the creases and scratches as darker or lighter areas) over the top of the specular map and adjust and blend it down so that those darker and lighter areas show up - Now you'll have a specular map that has some areas that might be 150 Red and Green, but the scratched parts might be only 90 or 100 Red and green, so it looks more realistic.

 

Bare in mind that the game only has a limited number of "lights" to use as reference for the colour, so it's very difficult to make the exceedingly subtle variations that we can see in real life. This is why most Specular Maps have very simple looking color combinations and very distinct Red, Green and Blue areas.

Thank you, Perraine, I would probably never figured all this out without all your help, guys. I guess I got enough information to start my experiments. I will post something about the results here.:)

[kitcat81]

Guys, your help was priceless and now I can create glossy and non glossy specular maps myself, everything works :laugh: Great great great thanks for all your patience and explanations!

[Perraine]

NP YW ... Have fun :)