Shininess textures

[Hassel85]

Hi. I'm working on fitted mesh clothes. And i would like that when i put the shininess low only shine one part of the clothes. How can i get that. I think it's creating an alpha. What colour and how do i make that alpha? Thanks.
And i modificated the shape of a trourser and i made them shorter i saved on photoshop the imagen as png but when i put the texture and i put the shorts on i can see the base of the long trousers, transparents but i can notice the true shape. Thanks.

[Tazzie Tuque]

Well if you are working on mesh fit mesh or regular rigged mesh, you will not be able to change that actual mesh by making a texutre shorter than the mesh uless you make the part you don't want to see totally invisible but the mesh will always be there and it won't be a very  neat result.  As for making one section of a mesh piece of clothing shiny, you can only do that if there are different faces on the mesh item to begin with, if the item is all one face then the whole thing can be made shiny or not.  If there are faces then select the face you want to be shiny and adjust the material shine to where you want it.   Making something shiny has nothing to do with an alpha.  Either you use a specular map in materials, or you use the shine option.  And as I said before if there is only one face you cannot make part of it shiny and part not using the shine options, it is either all or nothing.

[Hassel85]

Thanks for Your answer. I think the clothes has only one face. But could i make a specular map with only the part i want it to Shine? Or is there any way to do that in photoshop?

[Rolig Loon]

If you are clever, yes.  A surface's "shininess" is controlled by two parameters.  One is the Environmental Intensity, which is controlled by the whiteness/darkness of the alpha channel image in your Specular map.  The other is the Specular Exponent, which controls the roughness/sharpness of reflected light. That's set by the whiteness/darkness of the alpha channel image in your Normal map.  So, if you use Photoshop to tint the alpha channel image in those two maps with various shades of gray, you can "draw" the shininess of your surface.  See http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Material_Data

[Hassel85]

Thanks. But it sounds difficult! But i'll try to do it. Thanks