Was a speculer setup changed?

[busa]

Hello. This is busa01.

Was the raised bottom of the setup of a speculer carried out by the new version?
I adjusted the gloss of the new skin of A6M's carefully.
I think that the gloss of A6M which I saw off-line today differs from an old version.
Is this specification change?
Is it a bug?
Or is it my misapprehension?
Do I apply for change of "material.txt" to HTC?

Someone should help me.

Thank you for reading my poor English.

[busa]

I have forgotten to write.
Incidentally it is not the phenomenon of only A6M.
An unnatural highlight occurs in the spinner of all airplanes.

[Greebo]

Hi Busa,

I had a problem with the B-29 material files not working offline about six months ago. The offline game substituted the material file from the default skin rather than the new one I had written. Waffle found the problem and sorted it for the next patch. I'm not sure but I think he said the problem also affected the A6Ms, so maybe they changed material files for A6Ms then as well.

I did a quick offline test on an A6M skin. I set last number on the specular line to a very high number, the line was 0.150,0.150,1.000. This makes the reflections on the skin appear extremely blue which is what it should do. However the spinner was not affected and did not appear blue. So I would say the material file works OK on the skin, but is designed to not affect the spinner. This is not really a bug though as there are parts of any skin the material file is not supposed to work on, such as the gear, propeller blades, tyres etc. I vaguely recall asking Waffle to make the spinner a bit shinier on the A6M2 as the default skin has a bare metal spinner.

[busa]

Hi Greebo,

Thank you for a reply.
I investigated my phenomenon in detail to a slight degree.
I adjusted the speculer for paint of the half-gloss or 3/4 gloss of IJNAF.
The skin which carried out chalk strongly was set as 0.160.
The airplane of brand-new was set as 0.200.
The polished skin of ashes green was set as 0,220.
They are quite high setup.
But I made it a setup which highlight generates on the peak of a curved surface.
The unnatural highlight is not generated in a skin viewer.
(Incidentally in the old version, the skin viewer of reflection was somewhat stronger than the inside of a game.)
In a game, white reflection like pearl gloss occurs also in a large area now.
It seems to be reflection of the downy hair at the time of taking a photograph by the against the sun.
It seems that this effect is generated also in a main arena.
The cause may not be a speculer value.

Although I cannot judge what has occurred, I think that this phenomenon has spoiled appearance of solidity of objects.

Thank you for reading my poor English.

[Greebo]

Hi Busa,

I compared the default A6M2 skin in the skin viewer and in the offline game. I had self shadow disabled in the game as the skin viewer does not yet support self shadowing. I kept the time at noon in the game and set the skin viewer to "freeze light source" so the light comes from above in both cases. I used a material file with the specularity set to 0.200. With this set up the skin looked much the same in the game as in the skin viewer to me. Could you post some screenshots showing what you are seeing?

[busa]

Hi Greebo,

It is a digression to the beginning.
I did not understood how to upload pictures to this BBS.
And I had it taught to Mitsu a while ago. Thank you, Mitsu.
However, I need to look for the Cloud service to upload.

I checked the skin viewer again.
The changed effect may also fit the skin viewer.
But I think that the effect is not conspicuous from the phenomenon in the arena.
If the value of a speculer is reduced, the effect will decrease.
But the same textures as old Version were not obtained.

Oh, I discovered the cause while having written this text.
It is the influence of "object self shadow".
The phenomenon will be generated if "object self shadow" is turned ON.
In this case, it is effective in that the light source was added.
If it is turned OFF also in the most intelligible spinner, eccentric reflection will disappear.
When it is OFF, skins are visible to the almost same textures as an old version.

By the way,My new skin of A6M5 tends to be influenced.
I think that I want you to help.
Can I send a skin to you by E-mail, and can you investigate it?
And do you still have the address which was being used in 2006?

Thank you for reading my poor English.

[Greebo]

Please feel free to email me your skin Busa, I'd like to see it. The email address is the same as before.

There is not much I can do though if the problem is caused by "object self shadow" as that is part of the game itself. Only HTC themselves can change the way lighting and shadow effects work in the game.

I will post a request in the wishlist forum for "object self shadow" effects to be added as an option to the skin viewer though.

[busa]

Hi Greebo,

I sent the skin and the screen shot by E-mail.
Although I was a holiday today, since it is work tomorrow, translation is impossible.
My reply may be overdue for a while. 

[Greebo]

I did some offline testing with the skins Busa sent me. To make the problem more noticeable I changed his specularity line in the material file from 0.208, 0.208, 0.208 to 1.000, 0.000, 0.000. This turns highlighted reflections on the skin bright red. The problem is definitely linked to having "object self shadow" set to on.

I flew around in a constant bank turning object self shadow on and off. With it off the highlights appear normal, the highlights react correctly to the angle of the sun and the highlight on the spinner is steady. However with it on the highlights shift around on the skin and the highlight on the spinner flickers up and down.

The only way to get rid of the flickering was to turn specularity off completely in the material file, i.e. 0.000, 0.000, 0.000 on that line, but then the skin looks too flat.

[busa]

Thank you, Greebo.

I did not have the capability to let you everybody understand this problem.
It is thankful to you.

Incidentally I also examined the addition.
I thought that a cubic effect was lost by Object Self Shadow.
Originally it should increase a cubic effect.
The skin of a deep color and bare metal has large influence especially.
And I found why a cubic effect would be lost.

Object Self Shadow generates a highlight from a different direction from the sun.
A shadow is generated by the light from the direction of solar.
The light source of Object Self Shadow does not illuminate a shadow.
And the highlight probably generated by Object Self Shadow has a high speculer value.

The picture which has generated the highlight from a different direction from the sun is appended.



The right shade in case Object Self Shadow is OFF.



The unnatural shade in case Object Self Shadow is ON.
In this case, the boundary of a shadow is emphasized too much.




When Object Self Shadow is ON and a solar position is low.
It makes the picture which is not possible.




In the case of an external viewpoint




I think that this is the phenomenon of unexpected circumstances for HTC.

[Greebo]

I have checked what Busa has described here again and can confirm it. With object self shadow set to on, specularity reflections on a skin are generated 180 degrees out of alignment. If the sun is to the west the reflections appear on the skin as if it were to the east. Reflections are not reversed in the vertical plane, just the horizontal.

I'm going to post this in the bugs forum, as it seems to me that this is one.

[busa]

Arrangement of captions are wrong...

[busa]

I'm sorry, Greebo.

Since I tried correction of the last post, this stupid post happened.
It seems that I had opened the long time posting page somehow.

And thank you for trying hard above all for solution of this problem.