Hi guys. I need some help navigating the Hypershade in Maya.
So I'm working on this Sci-Fi panel trying to progress my texturing/normal map baking and dont really know where to apply the texture sheets to. (If that makes sense).
Ok so my diffuse texture I've applied to the Color tab.
The normal sheet to the bump mapping tab and used as tangent space normals.
And my spec map to the Specular colour tab.
The one thats getting me at the minute is the glossiness sheet. 1 im not too sure how to make this. I know that when creating the spec, in simpe terms the whiter the area is on the texture sheet the more "shiny" it will be, and the reverse for darker areas.
What should I think about when creating a glossines map and what tab in the material editor should it be applied to.
Thanks for your help!
Replies
Sorry but I've just downloaded the free marmoset toolbag trial and had a quick mess around. Trying to go for sunlight hitting the panel...kinda deadspace 2ish. Suppose I'll get there in the end. Any crit is more than welcome, and some links to Marmoset tutorials. Have to buy this asap!
Usually a single value is good for gloss level. The only time I could see a gloss map being useful is if different areas of the texture have drastically different specular levels. Even then, it's hard to really control that values. In UDK you can specify a decimal or a whole number, and get very different results. With a texture, you only get values from 0 to 255.
Glossy
Diffuse
what it looks like on a tiny scale.
If you have the memory for it i would do a gloss map. if you gave all the different materials on your door different suitable values it will help to differentiate each material from the other.
Also dont forget to use an environment map. the shiny metal areas will really benefit from it.
And I thought the diffuse was the "colour" to put it in leymans terms.
At the minute, Im still trying to work out the difference between spec and gloss....:\. Nevermind adding environment maps....arrrgh!
Can you check out my texture sheet below and tell me where im going wrong, or simply what other maps need adding/how they work.
Many thanks guys! I bloody love polycount i do.
edit: gloss only takes up one channel so you could fill the other two with whatever your engine/shaders supports. usually people go with glow, self illumination, alpha or separate AO.
Spec = Reflection. In a game/low end shader the Spec only takes your scenes lights into consideration. the little blobs you see are a mathematical representation of how the lights would look if they were reflecting on the surface. It totally ignores the surrounding environment because it would take to long to calculate. So when you use spec your only getting a tiny amount of reflection information. this is why you combine it with an environment map.
SPEC = How reflective a surface is.
GLOSS = How blurry the relfection is.
Rough surfaces diffuse light that hits them. So they have low gloss
Smooth Surfaces cleanly reflect light so they have high gloss.
mirrors are highly glossy, where as rough metals while being highly reflective have a low gloss value.
some varrations in it too get this
i thought you used this tut this tut so i thought you would ready have a starting idea. http://philipk.net/tutorials/materials/metalmatte/metalmatte.html
To quote the valve wiki:
Exponent defines the "tightness" of the highlight. A higher exponent results in a smaller, tighter highlight while a lower exponent results in a broader flatter one.
Environment Maps are also commonly referred to as Cubemaps. These are basically static pictures of your environment that are projected onto the surface of your model, in order to fake reflections. These are usually defined in a shader or game editor, they are not a model-specific texture map.
Learn more about Cubemaps here and on the polycount wiki.
Haven't really worked with glossmaps. Is it common to actually use a map such as the one in Philipk's tutorial or do you just adjust it with a grey value?
depends on what the material is for most things i don't use a gloss/specular exponent but in the case of bigger texture sheets that i would use for buildings i will use the gloss map since there or more different types of materials in the sheet than on say a texture of just concrete or metal.
personally with smaller things of mostly one type of material i don't find it worth it and just use a value.