how to make a good specular?

NAIMA

Hi I have this image but I am not able to make a good specular out of it couse the highlights on the texture itself when I pass it to black and white graylevbel are too much deuniform and look bad ingame , any sugestion on how to make a good specular out of this ?

Ott

when I pass it to black and white graylevbel are too much deuniform and look bad ingame

Can you clarify this a little better please?

Can you post the actual asset as seen in game that "looks bad"?

One thing you need to realize is that specular maps shouldn't necessarily always be black and white images. The purpose of a specular map is somewhat in-depth, but one of the key functions of them is to reflect color that gives the surface realism. A green leafy surface like this will most likely not reflect light off that is white or gray, but instead have some of the green surface in it as well.

If I were doing a specular for a green leaf like this, I would probably have a slightly desaturated green for the diffuse, but a rather vibrant green specular so that when the light hits it, it really pops that green color you are looking for.

These leaves tend to have a somewhat "plasticy" look to them as well, and the specular would get more dull where the brown parts are as well.

The latest version of UDK has a very heavy foliage map in it for their GDC demo. I would highly suggest you check it out, as they also have several leaves similar to this as well.

SpeCter

I can´t even imagine that this looks good with or without a good specular map.It doesn´t look like it could be projected onto a mesh very well.I really want to see it applied.

NAIMA

Here is how looks ingame ...




And I am using crytek SDK not UDK ...

Will Faucher

Just make the spec map darker. Basically, the lighter it is, the shinier. The darker it is, the less shiny the prop will be.

Also, You only need colored specular maps when the object you are making a spec map for actually reflects light in that color. For example, a red christmas tree ornament. It is red, and thus, the spec map should be red in color. But most of the time, I usually simply destaturate the map entirely and play with the levels.

rasmus

From what I can google up it doesn't seem like these kind of leaves get that specular in real life (http://www.eteletours.com/EZINE/fronds-directional-upward.jpg), so I'd say you could do with toning it down in strength, then tint it a bit blue and utilize the alpha channel more as a mask to separate individual strands better - right now they seem a bit clumped together in places.

Shogun3d

Straight from Stefan Morrells hard surface tutorial on cg society.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=373024

However this is a more breakdown for hard surface spec, but the theory applies the same.

With your texture, and the results you are seeing. I would desaturate first, and then do a high pass to try and even out the levels because your palm has different values of green, this will affect the greyscale value. Then make new layer, set to screen and with a soft brush do some general stroks through the center of the palm so you get a general highlight. Then take a small brush and make subtle passes for the leaves if map is large enough. Merge into new layer and adjust levels more until you achieve a good result that you're happy with.

Probably one of the most useful tutorials that i've gotten the most out of while learning to understand the process of creating specular maps.

cholden

Since you're using Sandbox, I find plant specular work best pretty dark, but a lot of your effort is tweaking in the material editor. In the lighting settings I've had pretty good results with darker Specular Color (around 65). Of course, this can all change depending on your lighting and environment. I find myself always tweaking these things as I go along. Your in game shot doesn't look too bad though.

NAIMA

ùthe Problem I am having is that by using the very same texture and desaturate it and even tweaking it I always get spotted like specular m non uniform one as I would like , the thing I would like to have is a uniform light specular, I exagerated the light in the image just to show how is spotted the distribution of it , but my idea is to use the same very shape of the silouette of the alpha map of the leaf and somehow use a filter that can get the central skeleton uniform distance from borders of the leaf so to have a central enlightened skeleton in center and eventually work on that to have something uniform to blur out and get a nice shading , but I have no idea how to do , I mean I could even make a program myself in c++ to male this effect , becouse I know that it exhist the function but I would take too much time and not sure of the results , so I wonder if some kind of filter exhist to make this or ... better

May be I redo the whole texture by scratch again and this time follow your sugestions to make it look best from beginnning?

Adam L. Gray

Right, here's what you need to know. If you want a more uniform specular, then you should decrease the contrast in the specular map.

If the object has a bumpy normal map, you'd need to smooth out that too.

And lastly, if either of it worked, then you'd need to control the gloss value in order to set the width of the highlights. A lower value would mean that you'd get a smoother and more uniform distribution over the whole thing.

So, that's how to control the highlights, I can't assure you that the end result will look good though, that part is up to you

Shogun3d

Why don't you just paint it?