Help! No Specularity

[erostosthenes]

I'm having trouble trying to figure out how specularity works in Celestia. I have Rasillion's Murphid system and the specularity on those planets/moons is perfect, but my earth has NONE. i'm using the earth16k.dds texture files, but there's no reflections at all. and when i try to make maps for a blue mars, i don't know how to make that water specular either.

[Rassilon]

not sure whats going on there...I havent tried that texture yet...Everyone who is using it might want to respond here to let him know if your having the same problem...

Thing is that might be an explanation the earth 16k tex may not have been compiled with a specular map...Are you seeing them on oceans and continents? or none at all which shouldnt be happening unless the code for it has been taken out...

SpecularColor [ 0.85 0.95 0.95 ]
SpecularPower 85.0

Make sure those lines are there in the ssc file in the code for the Earth...

[abiogenesis]

The Earth16k.dds map doesn't have a specular map. I don't remember the exact reason. I think the level of DXT compression used didn't support alpha or something. It shouldn't be a big deal now, though, since 1.25pre3 supports separate spec files. Just make a low resolution specular map and add it to the ssc file. Now that I thought of that, I think I'll go try it out.

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

[Sum0]

Sounds to me like you're using bump mapping. If you're using 1.2.4 specular effects won't show if you're also using a bump map. 1.2.5 supports both at the same time, so either upgrade or remove the bump map from your .ssc. Hope i've been of some help...

[erostosthenes]

what is the line to use a separate specular map? i'm not using a bumpmap for earth, just the texture, and i'm using 1.2.5p3. maybe someone can upload their high res texture with specularity??

[t00fri]

The Earth16k.dds map doesn't have a specular map. I don't remember the exact reason. I think the level of DXT compression used didn't support alpha or something. It shouldn't be a big deal now, though, since 1.25pre3 supports separate spec files. Just make a low resolution specular map and add it to the ssc file. Now that I thought of that, I think I'll go try it out. :wink:

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

As far as I know, there is only one 16k earth dds file around, which has been converted by the user Pixel some time ago. He just converted the rgb channels using DXT1c [8:1 compression] format.
Rgb with an additional specular (alpha) channel would have to be converted as DXT3, which only gives 4:1 compression.

The 16k earth images on my Texture Foundry site make use of the amazing new 1.25 feature: The specular channel file may be /separate/ and of /different/ size! It needs much less resolution since it only characterizes the boundaries between reflective regions (sea) and nonreflective ones (land). So I use only a 4k specular map in addition to Pixel's 16k earth. That 4k map is again DXT1c [8:1]. Hence, even with a 32MB card, one gets a smooth performance for a 16k rgb texture /and/ a specular channel!

Bye Fridger

[Rassilon]

Its SpecularTexture "texturename.ext"....

I might be able to make one but the problem is is getting it to be seamless...Thats usually done when compiling the dds texture....

[abiogenesis]

I successfully converted the Earth16k.dds file into a specular map and added it to the .ssc file. It works beautifully. It is, however, a 16k specular map(!), because I used the Earth map as the source. Much more resolution than necessary, I know, but it looks good. Now all I need is a good bump map...

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

[t00fri]

I successfully converted the Earth16k.dds file into a specular map and added it to the .ssc file. It works beautifully. It is, however, a 16k specular map(!), because I used the Earth map as the source. Much more resolution than necessary, I know, but it looks good. Now all I need is a good bump map...

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

Does this mean you converted the 16k earth.dds into jpeg format, say, by means of nvdxt?? And then made a specular map out of it etc?
If yes, you could have reduced the map size easily ...

If yes, it seems you were able to handle 16k earth.dds files with
nvdxt?? On my machine nvdxt's always crash with 16k textures (see above)

I am confused about what you really did...


Moreover, I have deposited the 4k earth-spec.dds file that I made and which I am using with the 16k earth.dds , on my site,
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/texfoundry.php4

It is ready for download and is only 200k long.

The relevant part of solarsys.ssc reads:

"Earth" "Sol"
{
Texture "earth.dds"
NightTexture "earthnight.dds"
SpecularTexture "earth-spec.dds"
SpecularColor [ 0.51 0.55 0.51 ]
SpecularPower 35.0
# BumpMap "earthbump.jpg"
# BumpHeight 9.5
Color [ 0.85 0.85 1.0 ]
HazeColor [ 1 1 1 ]
HazeDensity 0.3
Radius 6378
# Oblateness 0.003
...


Note the parameters of the specular spot. Let me know if there is also interest for my 8k earthbump.jpg file that I used for making the images of "Los Andes" in my Gallery...It is great but dead slow;-)


Bye Fridger

[abiogenesis]

I am definitely interested in your bump map.

As for the 16k spec map, I just opened Earth16k.dds in PaintShop Pro using the photoshop dxt plug-in. Then, I selected all the water (lots and lots of water, all those tiny lakes...). I cleared all the water to white, all the land to black, then I saved it as a DXT1 compressed .dds file. Viola!

I know a lot of people say that they have problems with the dxt plug-in, but it works pretty well for me most of the time. Sometimes it craps out and gives me an error, but I can usually get it to do what I want.

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

[t00fri]

I am definitely interested in your bump map.

As for the 16k spec map, I just opened Earth16k.dds in PaintShop Pro using the photoshop dxt plug-in. Then, I selected all the water (lots and lots of water, all those tiny lakes...). I cleared all the water to white, all the land to black, then I saved it as a DXT1 compressed .dds file. Viola!

I know a lot of people say that they have problems with the dxt plug-in, but it works pretty well for me most of the time. Sometimes it craps out and gives me an error, but I can usually get it to do what I want.

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

The 8k earthbump.jpg is uploaded in the Texture Foundry site. Since I am not using commercial programs under MS$, I have to rely on nvdxt for converting to/from DXT format...

But why did you not reduce the size of the spec map in one go? It should be a triviality for these programs?



Bye Fridger

[Rassilon]

I do too Fridger...Photoshop doesnt cut it with the dxt plugin...Besides the exe works a hell of alot faster...

[t00fri]

I do too Fridger...Photoshop doesnt cut it with the dxt plugin...Besides the exe works a hell of alot faster...

got it...

Bye Fridger

[abiogenesis]

But why did you not reduce the size of the spec map in one go? It should be a triviality for these programs?

It would have been trivial, I'm sure. And it would have made the subsequet water selecting much simpler as well but, since I already had the 16k resolution, I figured I'd use it. There are some rivers in South America and Africa that only have a specular map of 1 or 2 pixels at 16k resolution. If I had reduced the scale, they wouldn't even show up. I probably can't even notice them anyway but, again, it's the principle! At least I know they're there.

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

[erostosthenes]

Does this mean you converted the 16k earth.dds into jpeg format, say, by means of nvdxt?? And then made a specular map out of it etc?
If yes, you could have reduced the map size easily ...

If yes, it seems you were able to handle 16k earth.dds files with
nvdxt?? On my machine nvdxt's always crash with 16k textures (see above)

I am confused about what you really did...


Moreover, I have deposited the 4k earth-spec.dds file that I made and which I am using with the 16k earth.dds , on my site,
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/texfoundry.html

It is ready for download and is only 200k long.

The relevant part of solarsys.ssc reads:

"Earth" "Sol"
{
Texture "earth.dds"
NightTexture "earthnight.dds"
SpecularTexture "earth-spec.dds"
SpecularColor [ 0.51 0.55 0.51 ]
SpecularPower 35.0
# BumpMap "earthbump.jpg"
# BumpHeight 9.5
Color [ 0.85 0.85 1.0 ]
HazeColor [ 1 1 1 ]
HazeDensity 0.3
Radius 6378
# Oblateness 0.003
...


Note the parameters of the specular spot. Let me know if there is also interest for my 8k earthbump.jpg file that I used for making the images of "Los Andes" in my Gallery...It is great but dead slow;-)


Bye Fridger

i tried all this with your textures and it's still not relflecting! i don't understand why. my solarsys file:

"Earth" "Sol"
{
Texture "earth16k.dds"
NightTexture "earthnight.jpg"
SpecularTexture "earth-spec.dds"
SpecularColor [ 0.51 0.55 0.51 ]
SpecularPower 35.0
# BumpMap "earthbump.jpg"
# BumpHeight 9.5
Color [ 0.85 0.85 1.0 ]
HazeColor [ 1 1 1 ]
HazeDensity 0.3
Radius 6378
# Oblateness 0.003

[t00fri]

i tried all this with your textures and it's still not relflecting! :( i don't understand why. my solarsys file:

"Earth" "Sol"
{
Texture "earth16k.dds"
NightTexture "earthnight.jpg"
SpecularTexture "earth-spec.dds"
SpecularColor [ 0.51 0.55 0.51 ]
SpecularPower 35.0
# BumpMap "earthbump.jpg"
# BumpHeight 9.5
Color [ 0.85 0.85 1.0 ]
HazeColor [ 1 1 1 ]
HazeDensity 0.3
Radius 6378
# Oblateness 0.003

I guess you have put earth-spec.dds and earth16k.dds into the /hires/ folder. Then you have to switch the resolution to hires first by pushing SHIFT R, in order to see the specularity.

But I am sure you know this...

With such partial info about which of your earth textures is in which of the three texture folders, I can at best guess...

Bye Fridger

[erostosthenes]

all my textures are in the medium res folder. but i tried copying them to the highres and switching with R to high res, but it still wasn't there. can anyone tell me they've had success using the SpecularTexture code in their solarsys file?

[t00fri]

all my textures are in the medium res folder. but i tried copying them to the highres and switching with R to high res, but it still wasn't there. can anyone tell me they've had success using the SpecularTexture code in their solarsys file?

This is indeed hard to understand if all your previous claims concerning specular support are correct.

Although you have never specified your graphics hardware, I suppose it does support pixel and vertex shading as you implicitly state (NVIDIA?).

What happens by typing CTRL P several times? Is Pixel/Vertex shading enabled|disabled in the options dialog?? Check!

Are you sure that the globe that is displayed is named earth16k.dds in your texture dir? Check all file names against those in solarsys.ssc!

I guess there is a typo somewhere in your file names. It is not a problem of solarsys.ssc if your hardware is able to do spec display.

Bye Fridger

[erostosthenes]

HA! it was cntrl v to turn on vertex shading that did it. however, now i have no bumpmapping. chris did say 1.2.5 allows both didn't he?

EDIT - i just realised it's worse than no bumpmapping. the bumpmapping is still there, but once i turn on vertex shading for the specularity, the bumpmap gets scaled totally wrong, and ends up wrapped around the earth several times.

EDIT2 - i'm using the NVIDIA GEFORCE 3, 128MB. after some experimentation, i've found something very odd. if i disable the bumpmap in the solarsys file, the specularity is no longer correct. instead of just reflecting off the oceans, it reflects off land as well. when i put the bumpmap back, it only reflects off the oceans, but the bumpmap is scaled incorrectly as stated above. if i turn vertex shading back off, specularity goes away, but the bumpmapping is scaled correctly. moreover, using a jpg specular texture didn't work. it reflected off everything. only the dds file reflected off only the oceans.

here's what i have now:

"Earth" "Sol"
{
Texture "earth16k.dds"
# NightTexture "earthnight.jpg"
SpecularTexture "earth-spec.dds"
SpecularColor [ 0.51 0.55 0.51 ]
SpecularPower 25
BumpMap "earthbump.jpg"
BumpHeight 9.5
Color [ 0.85 0.85 1.0 ]
HazeColor [ 1 1 1 ]
HazeDensity 0.3
Radius 6378
# Oblateness 0.003


turning on vertex shading also affected objects that don't have a sepcular map. saturn turned a little purpleish, mecury's and the moon's bumpmaps don't look so good, and i noticed by turning vertex on and off, pluto's bumpmap was actually reversing! this is all very strange.

[chris]

HA! it was cntrl v to turn on vertex shading that did it. however, now i have no bumpmapping. chris did say 1.2.5 allows both didn't he?

EDIT - i just realised it's worse than no bumpmapping. the bumpmapping is still there, but once i turn on vertex shading for the specularity, the bumpmap gets scaled totally wrong, and ends up wrapped around the earth several times.

Which version of Celestia are you using? You need Celestia 1.2.5 prerelease 3 (for Windows; on Linux, you'll need the latest from CVS) in order for bump + specular to work properly. Older versions of Celestia rendered textures incorrectly when bump maps and color maps had different sizes.

--Chris