organic specular help!

MikeF · Jan 2012

http://www.heartworks.me.uk/
this is the effect that i'm after for a moving organic surface i'm working with.
notice how the surface has an almost dynamic specularity to it? i cant quite seem to wrap my head around how to achieve this effect in realtime (specifically unity) as all of my tests end up looking stationary and painted on.

any help would be really appreciated in terms of how i could achieve this moving "wet" effect

Swizzle · Jan 2012

That's just strong, glossy specular and some noise in the bump or normal map. The bumps pick up specular highlights really well, so the spec looks good.

gsokol · Jan 2012

Bump up the gloss. In unity this would be the Shininess value.

Basically the effect your looking for here is just a really tight specular highlight with a complementary normal map. Also, you might want to get a fairly strong light up close to the object too.

Edit: Drats! Swizzle beat me to it

odium · Jan 2012

Bump mapped env maps would do the tick there.

MikeF · Jan 2012

thanks guys, i'l give those a shot.
Odium, what do you mean by bump mapped env maps?
like a cubemap multiplied over the normal channel?

odium · Jan 2012

Simple terms, its an env map effect that is influenced by the normal/bump/height/whatever stage. As its additive, it can create shiny, almost wet like effects quite easy. For example, heres a shot of the effect in a dark, poorly lit area so you can see the shine:

Also, maybe some rim lighting and SSS can help sell whatever it is you are doing?

MikeF · Jan 2012

ahhh, i see. Thanks odium, that should also help out quite a bit

EarthQuake · Jan 2012

An env map or image based lighting type cube map solution is inherently dependent on the normals of the mesh, whether you've got a simple vertex shaded lowpoly, lowpoly with bump converted normal or lowpoly with baked from high normal map its all the same.

So, what odium was really saying was "use an env/cube map".

The lighting in marmoset is based on cube maps(image based lighting), and 3point shader and Xolius both have inputs for cube maps for ambient light and reflections, so they may be a good starting point to look at. I'm not sure what sort of shaders are available for Unity but you might be able to find a basic IBL shader.

You can additionally use a gloss map to control the "blurryness" of the cube map, usually making use of the various mipmaps(lower res mip for blurrier area).

OtrickP · Jan 2012

Also, be Cautious of where the light source is, the heart seems to have hard spec on the top bottem and sides and suble rim.

organic specular help!

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