textures

[Sennacherib 0]

i understood like you. but i think, that the normal map and the specular map are not necessary for all the textures. i suppose, that we could use photoshop as we use it for ofp.

[Zander 0]

nothing much to know about specular, black for no reflection and white for full reflection, and again grayscale range to...

[Messiah 2]

yeah, You only use the Normal Map and Specular maps if you need them I assume.

[edit]

cheers zander, nice to see a comparison of it in action.

[Zander 0]

you dont need specular for all objets but normal map will add lot of details, forget ofp and use full features of arma.

[Sennacherib 0]

thx for the example.

Quote[/b] ] forget ofp and use full features of arma

poor ofp

[dm 9]

ok, so to make sure i've got my head around this:

You have the normal texture file, like in OFP which defines the actual texture/colour etc - Diffuse Map.

You then have a corresponding Normal Map that uses the same uv co-ords as the diffuse map, but this dictates apparent height - bump maps - using RGB which you create using the normal map plugin from nvidia for PS.

Specular map again uses the same UV co-ords, and uses grescale to dictate shinyness of surface. White is shiny areas, black is matt.

If that somewhere near correct?

Yup, that is 100% correct

[norsu 180]

You can also have colors in specular map. These define saturation of the shine. Though I'm not sure if ArmA supports this.

For military vehicles an almost black specular is usually the best because of the matt paint on them. Only some reflective surfaces like glass and scratched metal need more detailed speculars. Sometimes you can even use much smaller specular texture size than the normal and diffuse maps to raise performance .

[Messiah 2]

You can also have colors in specular map. These define saturation of the shine. Though I'm not sure if ArmA supports this.

For military vehicles an almost black specular is usually the best because of the matt paint on them. Only some reflective surfaces like glass and scratched metal need more detailed speculars. Sometimes you can even use much smaller specular texture size than the normal and diffuse maps to raise performance .

yeah i assumed as much - specualr isnt going to be used that much with that majority of my work, but like you said its useful for picking out areas like you described

im quite excited about the possibilities.

[Sennacherib 0]

after a lot of attempts with a turret. my conclusion: normal map hates the holes. if you need holes in the turret for the commander and the gunner, you can have them in the low poly model, but not for the high polys one. the cage doesn't match really well the holes. but without these holes in the high polys model, that works fine.