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Hi,

first i used the msh.option to add an bump/normal mal: next i used the meshtool: why is the model first that shiny, and how can i do that with the meshtool too??

What did you put in the .msh.option and in the .tga.option files? I can only find examples of bump maps in the stock assets.

I don't know why you'd want it to be that shiny, it looks pretty awful to me.

One model is using the bump + specular (the shiny one). The other is just using bump.

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You have your images and descriptions mixed up; enabling bump via the .msh.option file shouldn't make it shiny, just bumpy.

If you use the Meshtool to enable bump/normal map (which is really bump/normal + specular), be sure to change the 80 in the fifth place over after ATRB to 00 and the 1B in the sixth place over to 1C.

After that, be sure to create a specular map texture to control/adjust the shininess of the model. This texture should be the alpha layer of both your diffuse texture and bump/normal map texture. The one in the bump/normal map texture controls the shininess when the in-game lighting is set on high, whereas the one in the diffuse is for medium lighting.

Thank you for your help. I never had an specular map. But when I only used the msh.option method it was that shiny. I checked the msh and they have the 80 and 1B at the right places. I never found a way to use the alpha chanel thing. I'm handy with PhotoShopElements and paint.net.

But as far as I know both cannot deal with the alpha chanel. So I tried gimp, but I didn't got that working. Is there a tutorial how to add an specular map to the alpha channel with gimp? Or is there a plugin that can do it with pse, too?

The way I add them to gimp is that I RGB decompose the image, close all but one of the grayscales, and then make the one left open my greyscale layer. I make the modifications I need and then rgb decompose the main image again. Then RGBA compose it with the modified grayscale set as the alpha.

Anakin: I've heard from every Photoshop user I know that all iterations of the program are terrible when it comes to working with alpha channels unless you really, really, REALLY know what you're doing, so GIMP will be your best option here most likely. :p

Anakin wrote:... I'm handy with PhotoShopElements ... But as far as I know both cannot deal with the alpha chanel...

I'm not familiar with Elements (I use Photoshop CS2), but I don't think Elements supports alpha channels based on what I read.

PSE does not support channels [and never has] - that's a full PS feature.

While Elements does not support Channels in the sense of RGB channels, like PS CS, saving a selection does create an Alpha Channel which gets saved with the image.

@Marth8880
Working with alpha channels in Photoshop is by far more intuitive than any other software I ever used.
To create an alpha channel click "Create new channel" under the "Channels" tab then select it and paint on it black/white/gray to define the affected parts of your image and save it as 32 bit. There is nothing difficult about it.

http://www.photoshop.com/tutorials/360
http://www.photoshop.com/tutorials/209
http://www.photoshop.com/tutorials/199
http://www.photoshop.com/tutorials/189
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to- ... With-Alpha
https://www.bing.com/search?q=alpha%20c ... &form=QBRE


The free and open source Krita looks promising.

PSE does not support Alpha channel. It can handle it, but there are no menu entries that can be used to add or remove or edit the alpha channel. Paint.net simply has no idea what to do with alpha and ignores the informations.

To enable the ability to modify the Channels i need somthing like that: http://elementsplus.net/

For now you'll easily be best off with GIMP.

Super quick GIMP tutorial.

1) Open Image.
2) Go to Layer -> Transparency -> Add Alpha Channel (if you already have one this will be greyed out).
3) Go to Colors -> Components -> Decompose. Select RGBA. Make sure Decompose to layers is not selected. This turns the RGBA layers into separate easily edited images.
4) Edit the Alpha channel layer to your heart's content. If you had to add one to the image, it will be all white.
5) When finished, while editing the alpha channel go to Colors -> Components -> Recompose. This automatically puts the 4 images back together in the original image.
6) Save. You can close out the 4 images that make up your layers, you can always Decompose the original image again.

I think i realy need to work with gimp. I just opend my tga in the trail of the latest photoshop. My alpha was complete whith.
i LOVE PhotoShop.

It is looking a lot better, but I'd tone down the specular even further.

Clone commando armor is primarily made of carbon, which is a very dark material. They'd want to make the duraplast as dull as possible, because having sunlight reflect off your armor giving away your position from 20km is a bad thing in a warzone. Non-reflective coatings would be a must.

I found a workaround. I make an grey scale picture, and remove the black color (looking for an photoshop plugin at the moment. I only have one for paint.net). After i removed the black i can select everything by klicking on the preview image in the layer window. And with "Auswahl Speichern" i save everything that is selected as white. and everything else as black. Because my Paint.net plugin removes everything black there are semitransparent parts. These are selected as such and so i can save greyscales as alpha, too. But it's very much work.


==EDIT==

I found such an plugin for PSE. Called AlphaWorks.

Here the result. I darken the picture a bit and removed the black again.

middle light quality - it's an old version with an complete white alpha i think. I just wanted you to show that the bump is disabled. I think bf doesn't even touch the bump file on this settings. That's why you need to save the specular map in the diffuse image, too. and with high quality: I hope i'll get such great results with nedarb's RC, too. starting with it next week.

I'd say you have the specular level down to a good place. If anything is left to be edited, it'd be the bump map, but that's another discussion.

Yeah, I'd lessen the normal map height intensity by like, at least 50%.