T3D 1.1 B1 - Specular Maps

#1 Apparently ...

You now have to check Specular on the material, which you didn't before with a SpecMap. Also adding a SpecMap turns Specular off. Specular Power controls the power of the SpecMap (seems to go up in 16s or 12s - can't remember which)

Whether this is a bug or the new way of doing things is ... er ... *shrugs* --> but that of course means that it fails with using a standard Normal Map (goes black tiger stripe on your model - you will notice if this happens!) so SpecMaps need DXT5_NM at the moment --- but also be aware that DXT5_NM is busticated ... Fix here - scroll down --- so me thinks it'll probably revert to how it was before ...

As for creating a SpecMap ... it's just an image with the same UV as your diffuse and normal.

#2 The specular check box is actually if you wanted to add a uniform specular effect to the object without the need for a specular map, remove your spec map and just check this and change the color to something like Red to very easily see this on any object. That does appear to work as advertised for the most part.

The odd thing is I kept seeing people talk about using transparency instead of standard black and white values for the specular map and that oddly enough SEEMS to actually do something compared to doing black and white (which is the normal way of creating spec maps) which is why I asked about creating them to verify that somehow Torque isn't doing this in an odd way now.

So I will defiantly look into this fix, I still think this is potentially busted and should not require the normal it should simply use the Spec Map regardless of other settings but it doesn't appear to be doing that.

#3 Specular check box is required in 1.1b1 to get a specmap to work -- which means you cannot use DDS for a normal map unless it is DXT5_NM. (not a problem for moi personally ... but some folks might want to use a standard DXT1 for compression)

Check out stock Gideon who uses pngs. No specular check box -> no specular map working.

#4 I understand what you are saying, I'm just saying that this appears to be a complete back ass way of "enabling" spec then if this is how it is working which means they have broken it when trying to add additional features.

If I add a spec map, it should effect the object, I should not have to check a box to enable that texture. The check box should only be if I want to add full object specular mapping without the need for a separate texture (which it does do right now), which should then of course be superseded by a Spec Map if one is present.

Nothing on this screen basically "acts" as expected and of course the docs are lacking in any information (even a "changelog" would be useful).

As I have mentioned, I can add Spec Map that uses transparency in place of the standard white and black without checking the specular box and it actually does appear to effect the model in the way one might expect (not perfect which is why I was thrown off).

I think someone seriously needs to take a look at their code changes in this area because this is a pretty basic function of a 3D engine to have been broken.

#5

Quote:
a complete back ass way of "enabling" spec

Yep! ;)

There's a few things which appear to have got busticated in the last version. Fingers crossed for all being re-fixicated in the next version (or at least on full release).