Specular Highlights?

[PeterBitt]

How does one go about doing such a thing. I have some experience with textures and bump maps, and a little with morrowind modding but have no idea where should I start with this.

- install the texture replacer you want
- make a copy of the textures you want to add normal maps to and add "_n" to the filename
- convert those textures into normal maps using Nvidia dds plugin for photoshop
- open the mesh in NifSkope and add a "Bump Map" to each NiTexturingProperty

For speculars use the material property in NifSkope or the alpha channel of the diffuse texture and add a specular property to your mesh with the flag set to 1.

[PeterBitt]

Scrawl, might it be that speculars only reflect the light of the sun/moon and dont take any other light sources in account?
It is kinda hard to tell for me as the light sources in MW/OpenMW are so dull and I am not sure if e.g. a torch doesnt cause specular reflections only because its not intense enough?
What I have in mind is that I would like some materials to reflect the light of your torch as you stand in front of it.

Something that would be a great addition to OpenCS: a light intensity setting for the lightsources!

Are HDR and Bloom shaders planned for 1.0 release?

[sirherrbatka]

Are HDR and Bloom shaders planned for 1.0 release?

Actually I'm surprised that Zini allowed merging all that graphics stuff before 1.0.0.

[scrawl]

Scrawl, might it be that speculars only reflect the light of the sun/moon and dont take any other light sources in account?
It is kinda hard to tell for me as the light sources in MW/OpenMW are so dull and I am not sure if e.g. a torch doesnt cause specular reflections only because its not intense enough?
What I have in mind is that I would like some materials to reflect the light of your torch as you stand in front of it.

You are correct. Only directional lights have specular at the moment. This will change in the future, but there's a few reasons for not doing it at the moment:
- MW's lights don't have any specular colors defined. For the sun / moon light, assuming that specular = diffuse color kinda works out (doesn't look too bad). But I think most point lights will need manual adjustment of specular color to look good. Especially due to how liberal point lights are used (atmospheric background lighting, negative light for dark corners etc)
- Performance reasons. I don't want to calculate specular for all 8 lights in the shader, especially when the default meshes don't even make use of specular. We could later make an UI option to enable it, once we have proper specular colors per light.

Something that would be a great addition to OpenCS: a light intensity setting for the lightsources!

Really, no need for intensity or anything. Add a specular color property and it'll be fine.

Are HDR and Bloom shaders planned for 1.0 release?

No.

[PeterBitt]

Alright thanks for clearing that up! I will now patiently wait for that and the automatic detection of normal maps.

Of course that might very well come after 1.0, but how awesome would it be when there is a day one mod adding speculars and normal maps to all the vanilla textures

I am so stoked for OpenMW now. Great job!

[Tarius]

Alright thanks for clearing that up! I will now patiently wait for that and the automatic detection of normal maps.

Of course that might very well come after 1.0, but how awesome would it be when there is a day one mod adding speculars and normal maps to all the vanilla textures

I am so stoked for OpenMW now. Great job!

Indeed. This might actually be something that brings connary back with a kickass texture pack. I know he still lurks around and being able to expand on things might be something he cant resist.

Are HDR and Bloom shaders planned for 1.0 release?

Actually I'm surprised that Zini allowed merging all that graphics stuff before 1.0.0.

You're telling me! haha
Serously though, I figured that zini would probably allow something like that if it was finished and didnt have any bad bugs. I think mostly he doesnt want people "officially" working on stuff other than whats there for 1.0 and also to make sure the codebase doesnt expand too much. Something like implmenting basic mapping shouldnt have been a difficult or complicated thing.

[Okulo]

I figured that zini would probably allow something like that if it was finished and didnt have any bad bugs. I think mostly he doesnt want people "officially" working on stuff other than whats there for 1.0 and also to make sure the codebase doesnt expand too much. Something like implmenting basic mapping shouldnt have been a difficult or complicated thing.

But it's very good PR, which attracts more contributors.

[PeterBitt]

Vanilla ground textures with normal, specular and parallax maps:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/105268208 ... 6492093137

Given that the ground textures are some of the blurriest in the game, I am surprised how well they work with these features without editing! Reminds me of Outcast terrain in places.

Scrawl, as you see in some of the screenshots, big chunks of the terrain turn completely white and I dont know why. I am pretty sure its not a texture problem because other spots do work properly.

Also, am I able yet to determine how small or big a specular spot light is?
Will there be a setting allowing to globally change height of the parallax maps?
Will we be able to do the same thing for glow maps in terrain textures? I would like to make those small lava spots in some of the Molag Amur textures glowing red.
Thanks again scrawl for implementing this pre 1.0! Its great to be able to get some stuff done before release. I will share those ground textures as soon as I am done.

[Br0ken]

Vanilla ground textures with normal, specular and parallax maps:

Wow, it's awesome! It would be nice to shoot a video with these textures. Great for PR!

[werdanith]

Vanilla ground textures with normal, specular and parallax maps

This looks gorgeous.