Expert skinners/3D modelers - how are antiglare areas produced?

[oboe]

I need someone with a 3D modelling/skin understanding to help me understand a concept in AH.

Take a look at this image.   It is a simple P-38J skin I made by filling the .bmp file entirely with a single shade of bluish gray.   The only other thing included the .bmp file is the panel lines layer.   You can easily see the dull, matte finish in areas corresponding to where antiglare olive drab or flat black paint would be applied (labelled 'A').   I did nothing in the skin file to make these areas stand out, but they clearly do.

   

How is this effect produced?   

My understanding via Skuzzy is that AH allows planes to have one and only one material (whose properties are governed by the parameters in the material.txt file).   But this image clearly shows areas with two different specularities (A and B).   

Is it possible this effect is accomplished by leaving sections of the 3D model skin material as "undefined", rather than assigning it a material - so that this skin area is ungoverned by the properties encoded in the material.txt file?

Some component underlying the skin .bmp is allowing the appearance of two different specularities on the same skin and I'm trying to understand how it is accomplished.    Is there anything else besides the 3D model where this information could be encoded?

Thx help

[VonMessa]

I admit that I am very low on the skinning food chain, but I believe that AH takes care of the sun and its location with regard to your plane. 

I think I read that somewhere along with a post about not adding highlights to a skin.

I'll allow someone t correct any of that if it is wrong. 

[Krusty]

I believe they've told us before the anit-glare is hard-coded in. Can't get rid of it. I don't think it's "left out" of the material code, I think it has its own material code that supercedes the default, and you cannot edit this specific-area-custom-material file.

[MachNix]

All the areas of the 3D model are affected by the material.txt file.  What is happening is different material properties are assigned to different areas of the model.  An obvious example is the canopy area has had its opacity turned down to make it semi-transparent.  There is nothing you can do in the material.txt file to change the transparency.  You can however alter the tent of the glass in the skin file and change the color of the light reflected off the glass in the material.txt file.  But the real concern is with the anti-glare areas.

The anti-glare areas have their specular levels turned down as compared to the rest of the model.   Let’s say the level in the anti-glare areas is set at 10%.  Then the anti-glare areas will only apply 10% of the specular values specified in the material.txt file.  Now the anti-glare areas look very dull so they may have the specular levels set to zero.  If that is the case, the specular values in the material.txt file will be ignored.  Ambient, diffuse and self-illumination values will still be applied in the anti-glare areas.  You can test this by changing the ambient or diffuse color in the materil.txt file to something like red and see if the anti-glare areas also change.  You can also try changing the specular values to something like green and see if the anti-glare areas change color.

So the anti-glare areas have had a skin material assigned in the 3D model and it is governed by the properties encoded in the material.txt file.  The skin material properties such as specular levels can be coded directly into the 3D model or by applying a bitmap in the same manner as the skin file.  In either case, we don’t have access to these files.

GL

[oboe]

Thanks for your responses guys.

The problem I am dealing with is that the defined anti-glare areas of the P-38 area incorrect.  The anti-glare panel on the inner nacelles should extend downward to include the small panel section just below, containing the small air intake - and it should stretch from the base of the propeller hub backward to the wing.

I agree I have no access or facility to change this as a skinner.   I am asking HTC to consider fixing this problem, as it makes it impossible to correctly skin bare metal P-38s.    And the error is very noticeable, using both inside and outside the cockpit views.

I am being told that HTC cannot fix this problem because it bumps up against a polygon limit on the 3D model of the '38, or that it is a game limitation - that the 3D models have one and only one material assigned to them and to define antiglare areas would require a 2nd material in the 3D model, which the game doesn't support.

Neither of these explanations make sense to me so I am just looking for a deeper understanding of how the 3D model relates to the skin .bmp.

It doesn't sound to me like fixing this problem would be impossible.