Create Reflective Material For FS9

[flynby]

Using Windows 7, FSDS 3.5.1, FS9, and DXTbmp. Trying to make a reflective texture. Is there a *step by step* written tutorial to help a beginner? Thanks

[VulcanDriver]

What paint program are you using, PaintShopPro or something similar?

[flynby]

I am so sorry - Paint Shop ProX6. Also use Paint.net, but I *think* PSP would do a better job.

[VulcanDriver]

Yeah PSP is a great program in my opinion.

[MIKE JG]

For an airplane or scenery model??

Scenery can't be made reflective. Aircraft can only have reflective textures if they were coded that way.

[John Young]

That's certainly true Mike when modelling scenery conventionally. It is however possible with a bit of deception.

To make a reflective texture for a scenery object in FS9 you have to dupe the sim into thinking it’s an aircraft model. To do that open the -0.asm file and change the texture type to “AIRCRAFT”. Then drop the _asm file onto BGLC_9.comp and change the extention from .bgl to .mdl.

Set up the textures and alpha as for an aircraft.

John

[flynby]

This would be used for static scenery. Thank you so much for the help.

[John Young]

Is that a static aircraft model or a scenery object model like a building flynby and is the model itself finished and textured without the reflection?

Also, do you know how to produce an alpha channel and incorporate it in a texture?

Once we are clear about those two things, I'm sure we can help you fill in the gaps.

John

[MIKE JG]

Oooh that's a nice trick John, never knew that one!

[flynby]

I would use it as a static scenery object. It is finished without reflections. I have never made a alpha channel. This will be my first try at this reflection thing. I do have DXTbmp.

[John Young]

This is how I do it flynby.

The bulk of what's below is for an aircraft object, but you will probably need the last tweak to get the reflection recognised in FS9 on a scenery object.

PREPARING THE TEXTURE

Make a copy of your existing RGB texture artwork – the one used to generate the FS9 texture.

Here’s mine for my Lightning F1A:



Convert the artwork copy to greyscale and invert the colours to negative. That will form the basis of an alpha channel. Mine looks like this:



Next remove all the parts of the alpha artwork that are not intended to be reflective, including any markings. Any area that is painted pure white will not be reflective. The reflective areas should be painted in a plain grey. The darker the grey, the more reflective it will be. This is the finished result:



Save the file as “filename_Alpha”.

CONVERTING TO AN FS9 TEXTURE

Open your normal day time artwork in DxtBmp and in the “Alpha” drop down menu, select “import alpha channel”. Navigate to “filename_Alpha” and select it. The alpha channel should appear in the small window top right.

Make sure Mip Maps is switched on and save the file as Dxt3 with same file name as the texture you already have. Place it in your local FS9 texture folder.

SETTING UP THE TEXTURE IN THE MODEL

The new texture you have created needs to be assigned in FSDS with the same name in two different Material slots:

Diffuse Color
And
Reflection

For a scenery object, you can also assign a night texture to the “Ambient Color” slot. That will be the darkened day texture with the same alpha channel imported and saved with the _lm extension.

Set the Specular Color level to a light grey. The darker the setting, the greater the amount of dynamic shine on the model. You can also play with the “specular level” and “glossiness” settings.

I use Gmax for my models with the following Material setting for a reflective texture, but something similar should be available in FSDS.



FOOLING FS9

As Mike said, FS9 will not produce reflection on an FS9 scenery model, particulary if the model also has a transparency like a cockpit canopy. You have to fool it into thinking it’s an aircraft. Try it anyway at this stage. If the reflection isn’t there, just follow the instructions in my previous post. BGLCOMP.exe is a stand alone .exe that comes with many scenery design programs, including the FS9 SDK. Try a Windows search of your PC. If you can't find it, drop me a PM with your e-mail address and I’ll send you a copy.

Reflection needs a bit of trial and error in the depth of grey in the alpha channel. If the result is too shinny, lighten the reflective areas of the alpha.

Come back if you have any problems

John

[sr01]

John,a huge Thank You for posting ths !!!!!

[flynby]

Mr. Young, I thank you so much for this tutorial and using plain English. I am quite sure this will be viewed many times by beginners like me. Many many Thanks.

[John Young]

Glad that's useful. If anyone wants to know how to do it in FSX just shout. The settings are quite a bit more complex.

John