Color Spec/ Cube Maps and Decals
interpolator
Hey all!
I'm currently working on my demo reel environment for school, here's the link to the thread if you'd like to take a look: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=147714
My fellow students and I have ran into a number of interesting issues over the past month, and I was wondering if any of you had any light to shed on the issue
To get colour spec on our art we are checking on anisotropic specular as it mentions you have to be doing now in the documentation (for what reason, I'll never know, as the two attributes shouldn't be linked in any sensible way I can see - I could think of lots of times you would need colour spec but not anisotropic hightlights)
Anyways, maybe we are doing something wrong but every time we try to use any sort of decal on an object with anisotropic specular turned on the decal does not work properly.
To elaborate; if you lay a decal across two objects with different materials; one with anisotropic specular turned on and one without, you get odd results. On the one without you will get the full diff, spec and norm contribution of the decal as one would expect but with the other it seems to only receive the bump contribution (possibly gloss, hard to tell)
Interestingly enough, if you turn on anisotrophy and bake out a cube map in the area with the objects and load this into the environment slot of the objects material and check off anisotrophy you get to keep the colour spec, hahaha.
However the decal reacts the same way to an object with environment checked on as it does with anisotrophy :shifty:
We are all using the latest build so maybe this just hasn't been run into much yet. I've looked all over the place and there is little mention of it. This seems odd to me because anyone who is making say a sci-fi scene with loads of colour spec and reflections, I would expect them to be running into the same issues with decals as we are.
If anyone has any idea what we could be doing wrong I would appreciate hearing it!
I'm currently working on my demo reel environment for school, here's the link to the thread if you'd like to take a look: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=147714
My fellow students and I have ran into a number of interesting issues over the past month, and I was wondering if any of you had any light to shed on the issue
To get colour spec on our art we are checking on anisotropic specular as it mentions you have to be doing now in the documentation (for what reason, I'll never know, as the two attributes shouldn't be linked in any sensible way I can see - I could think of lots of times you would need colour spec but not anisotropic hightlights)
Anyways, maybe we are doing something wrong but every time we try to use any sort of decal on an object with anisotropic specular turned on the decal does not work properly.
To elaborate; if you lay a decal across two objects with different materials; one with anisotropic specular turned on and one without, you get odd results. On the one without you will get the full diff, spec and norm contribution of the decal as one would expect but with the other it seems to only receive the bump contribution (possibly gloss, hard to tell)
Interestingly enough, if you turn on anisotrophy and bake out a cube map in the area with the objects and load this into the environment slot of the objects material and check off anisotrophy you get to keep the colour spec, hahaha.
However the decal reacts the same way to an object with environment checked on as it does with anisotrophy :shifty:
We are all using the latest build so maybe this just hasn't been run into much yet. I've looked all over the place and there is little mention of it. This seems odd to me because anyone who is making say a sci-fi scene with loads of colour spec and reflections, I would expect them to be running into the same issues with decals as we are.
If anyone has any idea what we could be doing wrong I would appreciate hearing it!
Replies
Would you be able to provide a link to the documentation you are referring to? I have had a quick look on the Cryengine docs and found this http://docs.cryengine.com/display/SDKDOC2/Anisotropic+Specular+Highlights
It states that point-lights do not work with anisotropic specular, only the sun, so maybe that is your problem?
http://docs.cryengine.com/display/SDKDOC2/Basic+Material+Parameters
Refer to the heading "Specular Color":
"You can also colorize the reflected color by choosing a color in the color window. Note that this is only current supported with Anisotropic Specular."
Just to be clear I'm not actually particularlly interested in having an Anisotropic shaped highlight - It's just that in the present build it seems the only way to have color spec on an asset is to activate Anistoropic Specular in the Shader generation parameters.
Anisotropic specular has been deprecated from 3.6 onwards with the introduction of PBR.
And if so - thats fine in terms of the anisotropic shape, I'm not actually looking for it, I'm just puzzled as to why the only way to achieve color spec is to check on anisotropic specular in the shader generation parameters.
To be more specific, even if the spec map has color values in them, the material still only reflects white (albeit an equal amount of white as the map specifies) and will only reflect the specular color once anisotropic specular is checked on OR you check environment and plug in a cubemap
Both of these options result in the decals not working
What build are you using and can you provide a screen grab of the decal in your material editor?
Can you confirm color spec works as intended in the newest version??
Yes, anisotropic specular works slightly differently with PBR however you should get the results you are after