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[Solved] My whines on specularity painting


ajz3d
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There's Textures->Adjust->Color to Specular command. But is there an opposite command for that, like Specular to Color?

I'm struggling with the inability to paint 0% specularity on a layer that is over another layer with some specularity info.

I thought about using a workaround with which I'd simply copy specularity to color and create a separate layer out of it, but it seems there's no easy way of doing it without exporting specularity information to a file. And this is broken when it comes to exporting specularity from a currently selected layer only. A tooltip for Layers->Export->Specularity states:

Export specularity information in the current layer to a file.

The thing is, it exports specularity from all visible layers, so any other layer from which I don't want to export specularity should be hidden. And if I have 50 layers?

Also, what's even worse, the alpha mask in exported specularity files is not working properly (see: image)! So it's useless to perform any mathematical operations on both exported images merged into one.

It's driving me bananas. :crazy:

Or maybe my workflow is completely wrong? Perhaps it's supposed to be like that: only allow user to add specularity to stacked layers, and never ever subtract from it? So if an underlying layer has 100% specularity, it will remain 100% no matter what kind of specularity information layers that are above it contain? Why always additive?

Help! :help:

post-12523-0-72401500-1361564536_thumb.j

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Select the layer that has specular painting on it, set 3DC to specular only in the view menu so you can see better, and disable diffuse/depth painting (keeping specular painting enabled), then use the eraser tool. That's all provided I understood you correctly. It will remove just the specular from that layer without affecting diffuse and depth. You can remove all specularity from a layer too by right clicking on it and choosing the remove specularity option. Oh and if you want to select just one layer while making the rest invisible, hold down the alt key click when clicking the icon in the layer palette.

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Thanks, but that would be way, way too much work. If you have a grunge type of model to texture, with a whole load of layers, just imagine how much time you'd have to spend in order to manually erase every dust particle, rusty areas, mud, etc.

I don't understand the logic behind enforced additive specularity painting.

If I'm creating a new paint layer, then whether I paint colour, specularity or depth channels, most of the time I want them to have the values I paint, unless I specify otherwise - by picking colour/specularity/depth blending mode. If I want specularity to be additive between the layers, I should be able to choose that. Most of the time though I want this particular channel to remain in Standard Blending mode, meaning: what I paint is what I get, no matter what specularity information underlying layer has. Total control. The thing is, you only have total control when painting the colour channel.

Also, If I can do a conversion of a colour channel to specular channel, I think expecting a reverse operation to be available isn't too much to ask.

Right now I'm using a crazy workaround by painting layers without specularity and then, after I'm finished with them:

1. I make their copies.

2. Desaturate the copies and adjust lightness to my liking (preview takes a lot of time to calculate).

3. Make copies of copies and hide the first ones (backup).

4. Merge the new copies into one paint layer.

5. Select the new layer and copy it's colour to specular.

And it's not fun at all. Especially when working with 8k textures.

:wacko:

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I figured I wasn't understanding what you were getting at. After reading your post 10 more times (past my bed time I think), I believe I get it now and you're right about it being additive only. Specularity clearly isn't treated the same way as diffuse color. For example if I put all of my specularity painting on it's own layer and then change the opacity of that layer, nothing happens. Changing the blend mode does nothing as well. What you're trying to do seems logical enough, but doesn't work because you're expecting it to follow the same rules as color (i.e. the layer above overrides all of the ones below it) which it isn't designed to do. Only Andrew could say for sure whether or not making specularity behave more like color is possible to implement. It's certainly worth adding to Mantis. If not then yeah, you're probably going to have to adjust your workflow. I'm sorry that I couldn't be more useful, but at least I managed to help with the hiding 50 layers thing. ;)

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I figured I wasn't understanding what you were getting at. After reading your post 10 more times (past my bed time I think), I believe I get it now and you're right about it being additive only.

I'd rather blame my English and a poor choice of words. Man, I was so steamed up when writing those posts - frustrated to the limits, because I lost the whole day fighting with the discussed issue before figuring out a workaround (though a hardly acceptable one).

Specularity clearly isn't treated the same way as diffuse color. For example if I put all of my specularity painting on it's own layer and then change the opacity of that layer, nothing happens. Changing the blend mode does nothing as well. What you're trying to do seems logical enough, but doesn't work because you're expecting it to follow the same rules as color (i.e. the layer above overrides all of the ones below it) which it isn't designed to do. Only Andrew could say for sure whether or not making specularity behave more like color is possible to implement. It's certainly worth adding to Mantis. If not then yeah, you're probably going to have to adjust your workflow.

Yes. I'm not sure why Andrew implemented it this way, but I guess he must have had his reasons. Still, I find it counter-intuitive and something that adds a lot of unnecessary work just to keep this channel under full control (and depth as well). If all three channels could be handled in a similar way (up to a point, of course), I can't imagine how much time it would save. I might be mistaken (dunno how it looks behind the scenes), but specularity is a grey-scale bitmap after all.

I'm sorry that I couldn't be more useful, but at least I managed to help with the hiding 50 layers thing. ;)

This alone helped me a lot.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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The main reason I suggest not changing this functionality, is that you might want to layer a soft shiny layer over a hard one, to give the effect of a film coating over a shinier surface.

You mean you actually are satisfied with the current implementation? :blink:

Then how, pray tell, do you non-destructively paint low-to-no-specularity areas on your models?

Keep in mind that if you float your cursor over the specularity icon (the gray sphere near the top), you'll see settings for specularity and specularity opacity. I don't know if this might be useful, as well.

Values shown there are only really valid when painting specularity on a single layer. If you have two layers like from the video, with the bottom layer having high specularity, if you set your brush specularity to something lower and start painting on the topmost layer, you won't change the overall specularity at all. And this is WRONG.

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You mean you actually are satisfied with the current implementation?

Then how, pray tell, do you non-destructively paint low-to-no-specularity areas on your models?

I'm not often concerned about non-destructive painting of specularity, as I know what I want to paint, but if I was concerned about it, I would simply duplicate the current spec layer and work on a new one to see if it's what I want.
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Alvordr, no, no, this wouldn't work. First you'd have to delete all higher specularity information (higher than currently painted) from other layers beneath the layer you want to paint. And then your boss or client says, two days later, that he... actually liked the way it was before, but with the other changes done to other areas of the texture. After you've erased that specularity, that is. And you've got only several hours before the deadline. :rofl:

A simple layer based specularity blending mode drop box would be sufficient. You could set it to additive or standard blending, or whatever way you'd like the specific layer to influence the overall specularity.

Because right now, it's very easy to add the specularity, but near damn impossible to subtract it without destroying data from other layers.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 8 months later...

Possibly I will implement it. It could be done in so way: color of some layer(s) will be treated as specular/luminance (special blending mode)

One per layer, but overall specularity is just summ of layers specularity.

 

Andrew (administrator)

2014-01-30 18:06

 
Ok, implemented in 4.1
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