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Originally Posted by Osram
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If I understand , the requirement is that once you have saved or exported the file it is a very quick job to see it in 3D on the target model? Or are there other advantages to a viewer?
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Yes, just to very quickly see the skin on the target model. All that's needed is rotation and zooming around the model center to examine areas of small details closely. It would be almost exactly like the plane info/viewer in IL2 where you read stats and rotate around the plane. Just that little 3d (rotate and zoom) window, with selectable skins is all thats needed.
This could even be a separate, small program that is not actually in the game. Just like a little previewer app, that loads the models from the game install, and the skins from where ever the author has them saved. This would have a small memory footprint when a paint program is opened, and be quick to open and close.
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Yes, I heard that before from MSFS/CFS skinners.
<Coder's talk> I think this basically switches specular reflections on and off and does not affect the specular exponent, IOW the size of the highlights? </Coder's Talk>
Is there a tutorial or description about them somewhere?
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I don't know of any locations for exact tutorials on software behind this. But in short, in FS2004 there is a default "shine" map that is roughly like sky above, land below... and this is very specular and seems to behave like "cube mapping" (I think that's the term). This gets applied to any aircraft that has a reflection, univerally. This map seems to "move" on the aircraft surface giving the appearance of reflections over the painted skin.
In FS2004, there is an alpha map in the DTX skin files containing an 8bit grayscale image, which controls how much of the "reflection" shows all over the skin. Such as white for no shine, black for max shine, and gray levels in between.
I easily think a separate lower resolution 8bit file like you suggested, that could contain this reflectance data, and could be left out for low end cards as an option.
As a skinner you can use subtle grades and make the shine appear in different amounts all over the aircraft, like it's wear, or different materials too.
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Yes, I agree it would be nice to have a completely layered skin for each planetype, say in PSD format. Unfortunately, we are not able to supply this and it will be a job for the community  |
Hey no problem. I think working with IL2 made the community quite capable.
