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Can flexi prims have specular maps and qualities?


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I haven't found an answer to this question otherwise, although I could just be missing it in my overwhelm of trying to jump back into this world. Can Flexi prims have specular maps with shininess properties? Or does the flexi property sort of nullify it?
Also, is there any way to get flexi prims to reflect light properly when using the advanced graphics settings with shadows turned on? Currently, all the other types of objects look great except for some of my flexi objects.

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Seems simple enough to test...

flexy3.thumb.jpg.c4526637b99067058df832b5a293c3fd.jpg

So, yes, Flexies can have specular, as you can see. Of course, it changes them to the new accounting, so double the LI.

 

As for materials, and shadows, ugh. It's a mess. The worst is partially transparent, with shadows and projected lights, as on neck/ankle faders.

Edited by Callum Meriman
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Along with the yes you can use specular AND normal maps on flexi prims, there is no reason for them to double in land impact. Just change them to  convex hull in the features tab and you are set to go. While there might be some occasions when you need the objects to remain as prims, I can't think of any at the moment. Usually they were for plants which oftentimes are phantom anyway. Here is where you change. 

The thin cube I made flexi in this example does have a specular shine on there. :D

 

59bc1d0575dbc_convexhull.thumb.JPG.30c94864cbf402889a946a37d0a7380c.JPG

1024photo.JPG

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2 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

While there might be some occasions when you need the objects to remain as prims, I can't think of any at the moment. Usually they were for plants which oftentimes are phantom anyway.

Flexis are always phantom so there are never any point keeping the prim physics shape for them.

Edited by ChinRey
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54 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

Ha! See, I should be clever like Chic, and others :D Of course convex hull for those.

Only clever some days. Had a LOVELY item that I had been SO CLEVER making but part of it would just not make it past the uploader. Sort of like a tortured mesh prim I guess (a mesh turned to curve etc). Gave the uploader a tummy ache and I finally just deleted the offending part. We do what we can do.

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Thanks everyone! Now, it seems that if there is an alpha texture already used in the flexi, then the glossiness and environment settings go away? I can't think of any other reason why they would. Are those things that are configured in the 3D app used to create the specular texture / alphas? Or are the textures for specular basically the same format as they would be for a regular old texture with an alpha and all settings for shininess are set in SL? There is probably an official explanation for these things somewhere on this site and I'm just missing it in my eagerness to do a thousand things at once all of a sudden. 
Now my dilemma will be, would people value a shiny flexi prim set of wings more, or a non-flexible mesh set of shiny wings? I do love the way flexis move, but they would not catch the light the way a mesh object does. If I can fake that somehow with alphas or bump maps though, maybe I can stick to flexi prims and get the best of both worlds...

*Also I checked 'Notify me of replies' but I got no notifications, boo!

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1 hour ago, Violaine Villota said:

Thanks everyone! Now, it seems that if there is an alpha texture already used in the flexi, then the glossiness and environment settings go away? I can't think of any other reason why they would. Are those things that are configured in the 3D app used to create the specular texture / alphas? Or are the textures for specular basically the same format as they would be for a regular old texture with an alpha and all settings for shininess are set in SL? There is probably an official explanation for these things somewhere on this site and I'm just missing it in my eagerness to do a thousand things at once all of a sudden. 
Now my dilemma will be, would people value a shiny flexi prim set of wings more, or a non-flexible mesh set of shiny wings? I do love the way flexis move, but they would not catch the light the way a mesh object does. If I can fake that somehow with alphas or bump maps though, maybe I can stick to flexi prims and get the best of both worlds...

*Also I checked 'Notify me of replies' but I got no notifications, boo!

I have put a specular texture on an invisible prim by MISTAKE and it definitely took. Looked awful but took.  

It won't be too long until there is animated mesh, so that would be pretty spectacular perhaps. Of course if you don't already make mesh, that would be a big learning curve.

Keep in mind that there are still tons of folks that don't use ALM and so cannot see specular or normal mapping on objects. So if you can do close to the same with textures, in my mind that is a better overall solution :D. Folks (only a few) were doing that WAY before we had materials and their work was leaps and bounds above the others.

 

 

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Yeah, I definitely wouldn't want my items to look bad under less advanced settings. Maybe I could do both somehow and make the baked texture one an option. 

Or always use the baked texture with shiny specular settings on top. I think mesh would look pretty awesome and if Linden Lab ever allows them to be flexible that would be perfection!

After staying up til 2 or 3AM the last few nights digesting a ton of articles, tutorials, blog posts about the new aspects of SL that I am now new to, I'm ready to start making some mesh.

Now, to re-learn the updated programs that I used a few years ago and forgot how to get around in because I lost access to ZBrush and May since, and try out the tutorials for Blender and Zbrush . Seems like mesh is easier to make than Sculpties were, I remember them having soooo many limitations and I couldn't get the pretty details I wanted with those.

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I just did some tests with flexi prims and alpha diffuse maps. It seems there is a bug which is reducing the effect of specular maps quite drastically when the diffuse maps alpha mode is set to masking. This doesn't apply to flexis only. It happens on non-flexi prims, and meshes as well.
I then searched the Jira and found a report about it from October 2016.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-40719

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3 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

I just did some tests with flexi prims and alpha diffuse maps. It seems there is a bug which is reducing the effect of specular maps quite drastically when the diffuse maps alpha mode is set to masking. This doesn't apply to flexis only. It happens on non-flexi prims, and meshes as well.
I then searched the Jira and found a report about it from October 2016.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-40719

Interesting, thanks for the heads up! :)

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On 17 September 2017 at 10:39 AM, Violaine Villota said:

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't want my items to look bad under less advanced settings. Maybe I could do both somehow and make the baked texture one an option.

Or always use the baked texture with shiny specular settings on top

I was experimenting with environmental shine effects in Sims-2, back in,  ohh, 2006/7. One of the pioneers of Sims-2 clothing that was actually shiny.

My previous experience in 3D rendering had taught me that 'painted highlights' on diffuse textures always looked crap with calculated shine effects., the streaks of 'white wash and a house painters crush' fake shine on the texture, washed out the effects of the calculated shine in the shader.

Same went for shine effects in other games mods. When shine effects worked well, it was always with UN-mega-highlighted diffuse textures.

Realistically, you need to decide who gets the wet end of the stick, the oldies who claim they can't use ALM (usually in error) or the newbies who know its not as 'hi end' as everyone claims and have used it for several years now.

People ASSUME they cant use ALM becausze the official SL Inferiority Viewer, and FS, both only activate it automatically when you set the "One Graphics Slider to Ruin Them All" control to Ultra, but you can enable ALM manually at much lower settings and it looks great, and doesn't cause that much of a performance hit.



 

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8 hours ago, Klytyna said:

 you can enable ALM manually at much lower settings and it looks great, and doesn't cause that much of a performance hit.

Doesn't it? I did a quick test at the beta tester's meeting place at Morris on the beta grid. In that environment I got a 50% higher frame rate with ALM off than I did with it on.

It would be interesting if others would try the same test in different environments and with different hardware and viewers. It's easy enough to do. Go somewhere in SL, open the graphics preferences and if necessary the statistics window. Look at your fps, switch ALM on (or off if it's already on), wait for the fps to stabilize.

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14 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Doesn't it? I did a quick test at the beta tester's meeting place at Morris on the beta grid. In that environment I got a 50% higher frame rate with ALM off than I did with it on.

It would be interesting if others would try the same test in different environments and with different hardware and viewers. It's easy enough to do. Go somewhere in SL, open the graphics preferences and if necessary the statistics window. Look at your fps, switch ALM on (or off if it's already on), wait for the fps to stabilize.

Did you run it with shadows off under ALM? There's a difference between comparing an orange to an apple and comparing an orange to an apple pie.

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Okay so I'm really close to the result I wanted! The only major issue for me now is that the color reflecting off the wings is not the color I made in the specular map. The reflection is either white or just picking up the color of the main diffuse texture.

I made a greyscale height map in Photoshop, then used the 3D filter to make a Normals map from that. 

I made a specular alpha layer in that normals texture file as well, mostly white with a portion slightly grey as I want this to be very shiny.

I also made a specular texture file with the colors that I want to be reflected by the object, the alpha in the specular map file is also all pure white on the majority of the shape, should I be making the white part just slightly grey?
The specular map texture file I made has pale lavender, pink and green, those are the colors I want the reflections to be.
The diffuse texture of the wings is a sort of peach color mostly and it has a blended alpha layer so most of the wing membrane is at least 35% transparent, the veins are all opaque.
I can get a colored reflection by choosing a color in the shininess section but I thought that specular texture was supposed to provide the color? What am I missing? I tried it as both a jpeg and a tga file, does it need to be a different file type?
Or have I misunderstood what the specular texture can do and it doesn't affect the color of the reflection at all?
In the screen shots below, I updated just the upper wing panel with the materials textures, the bottom panel is the old texture with painted in highlights, set at full bright.


The first screen shot shows what it looks like on the wing with the specular map chosen to determine the reflection color (which should be a few bright colors) and the shininess color in the box left at white.
The second screen shot is what I actually want when I make the shininess color a bright purple, except I really wanted the multiple colors on my specular map texture with the other colors included.
Is my diffuse alpha just too transparent? Does the diffuse texture need to be darker or more opaque for colored specular highlights to show?
The mesh gown I'm wearing is great (from Mariposa), and that's what I thought the effect would be on my wings but the color is washing out to white :/ Is it working for her mesh gown because she used a darker color, or because she used a mesh with no transparency or both?

Screen Shot 2017-09-20 at 9.20.38 PM.png

Screen Shot 2017-09-20 at 9.41.08 PM.png

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Okay so I tried using the original diffuse texture with the painted on highlights and shadows and it looks a lot better. This is the original faked iridescent diffuse texture with the new normals and spectral map added to a flexi prim.

Second one shows the lavender version w/ faked iridescent diffuse texture using the new normals and specular map.
Is it the saturation of pixels, or the brightness of the colors of the original and the normal map that's really making it pop? It seems like maybe it's picking up a bit of color from the spectral map now but, not as close as I thought it would.
Sorry, I should have clarified that this is still just on the flexi. I'm amazed that it looks like a mesh until you see if from the side and this is really exciting if I can get the colors I want to work because I wouldn't  have to sacrifice the flexi aspect in order to get the a decently realistic iridescent! :) 
Anyway, I've scoured the Wiki and any articles or tutorials I could find and I feel like I'm doing everything suggested to make the reflections / highlights match my spectral texture I uploaded but it's not close enough yet. Do I need to use a mesh to get the colored spectral highlights to read from my texture map?

Screen Shot 2017-09-20 at 9.57.57 PM.png

Screen Shot 2017-09-20 at 10.02.37 PM.png

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Okay, I think I've got something I can work with now! Hopefully this video loads, I tried to clip it to make it shorter but Youtube was giving me errors.
I made a slightly darker and more opaque diffuse texture as well as more saturated and slightly darker Specular map texture so maybe that was they key?
Anyway, yay!!! I'm still open to tips on the best ways to get that specular color goodness to read from my texture file correctly but for now I guess this is decent :)
Going to get the lower panels done today too and maybe offer the flexi version as a freebie.
Is it too basic to call the color pumpkin spice? ;)

 

Edited by Violaine Villota
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14 hours ago, Violaine Villota said:

Do I need to use a mesh to get the colored spectral highlights to read from my texture map?

A prim is a mesh as well. So the answer is no.
The gown works nicely because it's a dark diffuse color. On a bright surface, lets say pure white <255,255,255> there won't be any specular highlights visible, because it can't get any brighter than pure white.

A rule of thumb is to have saturation, and brightness at a max around 80 % on the diffuse map, to leave some room for additional specular highlights.

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28 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

A prim is a mesh as well. So the answer is no.
The gown works nicely because it's a dark diffuse color. On a bright surface, lets say pure white <255,255,255> there won't be any specular highlights visible, because it can't get any brighter than pure white.

A rule of thumb is to have saturation, and brightness at a max around 80 % on the diffuse map, to leave some room for additional specular highlights.

Thank you. Yes it does seem that darker colors will show the specular highlights off better, however there is a gown by the same designer that is white, with blue and violet highlights and I am able to get that effect on a full perm white mesh gown I bought as well if I just pick a purple color in the shininess menu.
So when you say that if a surface is pure white the highlights won't be visible, is that only with pure white or slightly off white? Because I thought I got an effect like that with pure white, although I was not relying on a specular color map for that test on the mesh gown.
When you say the saturation and brightness should be around 80% on the diffuse map, do you mean the alpha for the area I want specular  highlights on should be no lighter than a 20% grey?
Just want to make sure I understand :) I really want to have some wings that look really transparent but still show that specular colored highlight using materials and have it look similar to the painted versions I had made in the past but I might have to accept that it might look a little different this way.
Trying another version now too to see what that will look like with a different diffuse texture.

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The saturation, brightness is the actual color on the diffuse map. Adding transparency into the mix makes things even more complicated indeed.

SaturationBrightness01.jpg.566b231b98662bea66309bbf41a7b1ba.jpg

About the white. When applying  color RGB 255, and the the surface is full lit, it will render at that color, RGB 255. It can't get any brighter than this, so there won't be any specular highlights visable.
If that RGB 255 white surface isn't full lit, like having the sun at sunset, it shades much darker than RGB 255 indeed, and specular highlights will become visible again.

 

Edited by arton Rotaru
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Gotcha! None of the colors in my texture are full white as far as I can tell.
I'll experiment with different levels of opacity of the diffuse texture as well as different levels of alpha grey brightness - I wonder if the surface of the normal was just a bit too glossy and a bit more diffusion might get some color back in there?
Hmm. I guess more opaque wings would utilize this feature better.

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I used a slightly darker alpha in the normals map texture this time, not too much difference though. I will have to mess with the opacity of the wing membrane then. If anyone knows a secret to getting a strong specular highlight color even on a very transparent surface I am all ears! Till then, well, I am pleased so far with what I'm able to get right now :D
Thank you everyone for all your help! Here they are with the new newest version of the normals, with the slightly darker alpha in there to reduce the gloss a bit to show more color. I think it worked, maybe? The dress I'm wearing I added a purple shine to just with the color picker and a blank specular texture, probably looks stronger since it's opaque.
I'm still pretty excited!

1 hour ago, arton Rotaru said:

The saturation, brightness is the actual color on the diffuse map. Adding transparency into the mix makes things even more complicated indeed.

SaturationBrightness01.jpg.566b231b98662bea66309bbf41a7b1ba.jpg

About the white. When applying  color RGB 255, and the the surface is full lit, it will render at that color, RGB 255. It can't get any brighter than this, so there won't be any specular highlights visable.
If that RGB 255 white surface isn't full lit, like having the sun at sunset, it shades much darker than RGB 255 indeed, and specular highlights will become visible again.

 

 

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