reflections [Defunct] [1.3] WindowShine-v16 - Gold foil update (26 December 17)

[Roxor]

4 hours ago, Avera9eJoe said:

D: Looks like I was wrong in both cases sorry

What do mean by "blown out"? Are the pods showing up as black? Is the whole thing reflective?

What don't you get with the textures? I'll do my best to help

From what I have understood so far, to make it work, I need to get the 3 textures for the mk3 pod from  Cormorant Aeronology. Next in Paint.net I should highlight the pod's windows and copy, then paste the pod's windows as a new layer.  After that I make the background 1% transparent, leaving only the windows visible.  Next I merge the two layers together and save.

Once I do that I need to re-create the Cormorant Aeronology textures folder path inside TextureReplacer and paste the newly edited pod textures into it. (C:\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\TextureReplacer\Default\Cormorant Aeronology\Assets\texture.dds)

Is this correct? Because when I did this the mk3 pod came out all white. Like the whole texture was showing up as 1% on the pod in game.

Should I have not merged the two layers?

_____________________________________________

I don't understand how to make a percentage adjustment on transparency

Spoiler

I put Opacity to 1 and the mk3 was paper white in game.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Roxor

[Roxor]

Ok so I have made some headway, but now my pod is all black and the windows are working.

Spoiler

 

Edited November 2, 2016 by Roxor

[Roxor]

So after trying everything I could, her is what I found.

Spoiler

The Cormorant Aeronology texture is not compatible with the standard method for making things compatible with WindowShine.  

I'm not 100% sure why but when I make the background too transparent, it turns all black.  When I tone down the transparency, the rest of the shuttle besides the windows starts to reflect before I can get rid of all the black spots on the pod.

In conclusion there is no happy medium where windows reflect and the pod is unaffected, no matter how transparent I make it.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I came close.  

[HafCoJoe]

45 minutes ago, Roxor said:

So after trying everything I could, her is what I found.

  Reveal hidden contents

The Cormorant Aeronology texture is not compatible with the standard method for making things compatible with WindowShine.  

I'm not 100% sure why but when I make the background too transparent, it turns all black.  When I tone down the transparency, the rest of the shuttle besides the windows starts to reflect before I can get rid of all the black spots on the pod.

In conclusion there is no happy medium where windows reflect and the pod is unaffected, no matter how transparent I make it.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I came close.  

I know your exact problem because I ran into it myself when creating my own textures. It looks like you're using paint.net? If you're using paint.net you should be able to solve the problem by creating a new layer on the top, pasting an unedited part texture onto it, setting the opacity to 1%, creating another layer below it, merging your 1% transparency layer on top of the new layer, and then exporting the texture from there, not merging the layers until it informs you that it will do so in save..

Edited November 2, 2016 by Avera9eJoe

[Roxor]

1 minute ago, Avera9eJoe said:

I know your exact problem because I ran into it myself when creating my own textures. It looks like you're using paint.net?

Yes

[HafCoJoe]

I edited my last message a lot -  should help you out some. What's happening is that when you save the texture it's picking up the rest of the texture as having 0% opacity, and because of that it's showing the texture as black in game (KSP doesn't like 0% opacity).

- Note there's also a specific way you should save the .dds textures. It's the image in the tutorial post.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Avera9eJoe

[Roxor]

When you say 1% transparency, my slider is 0-255 dose that mean I do 2.55?

[HafCoJoe]

1 minute ago, Roxor said:

When you say 1% transparency, my slider is 0-255 dose that mean I do 2.55?

You want it at 1.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Avera9eJoe

[Roxor]

Ok so to recap

Starting from the beginning? I'm somewhat confused.

#1. I take the Cormorant Aeronology texture and make all but the windows 1%

#2. Make a new layer on top of the window texture and paste an unedited texture and set to 1%

#3. Make a new blank layer under #2

#4 Merge  #2 on top of #3

#5 Save with Flatten

 

 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2016 by Roxor

[HafCoJoe]

11 hours ago, Roxor said:

Ok so to recap

Starting from the beginning? I'm somewhat confused.

#1. I take the Cormorant Aeronology texture and make all but the windows 1%

#2. Make a new layer on top of the window texture and paste an unedited texture and set to 1%

#3. Make a new blank layer under #2

#4 Merge  #2 on top of #3

#5 Save with Flatten

Yeah that should work. The whole point is to make sure there isn't any part of the texture with 0% transparency.

[Roxor]

7 hours ago, Avera9eJoe said:

Yeah that should work. The whole point is to make sure there isn't any part of the texture with 0% transparency.

Result

Spoiler

I did it step by step 

I don't understand why because I put everything to 1% nothing is at 0%

Why do I need that extra blank layer? (#3)

Edited November 2, 2016 by Roxor

[CobaltWolf]

@Avera9eJoe as usual, it was user error.

I'm not even sure what I was doing wrong before, but now I can get the rest of the BDB stuff done.

[HafCoJoe]

41 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

@Avera9eJoe as usual, it was user error.

I'm not even sure what I was doing wrong before, but now I can get the rest of the BDB stuff done.

Looks awesome!  Good luck with the rest of your BDB stuff

Edited November 2, 2016 by Avera9eJoe

[CobaltWolf]

3 minutes ago, Avera9eJoe said:

Looks awesome!  Good luck with the rest of your BDB stuff

Thanks! Before I get asked - how much control would I have over the shader if I wanted to make the whole capsule reflective? Would I be able to paint on grime etc that would reduce the reflectivity in areas?

[cy4n]

16 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Thanks! Before I get asked - how much control would I have over the shader if I wanted to make the whole capsule reflective? Would I be able to paint on grime etc that would reduce the reflectivity in areas?

Yup! Transparency determines the strength of the reflection shader, so in theory, you could make the whole thing slightly reflective.

[CobaltWolf]

2 minutes ago, cy4n said:

Yup! Transparency determines the strength of the reflection shader, so in theory, you could make the whole thing slightly reflective.

Oh god do you realize how much extra work you just made for me? I was half hoping that you'd say no just so I could tell people it couldn't be done.

Edited November 3, 2016 by CobaltWolf

[CobaltWolf]

34 minutes ago, cy4n said:

Yup! Transparency determines the strength of the reflection shader, so in theory, you could make the whole thing slightly reflective.

Hmm, no good from what I can tell. Here's a screenshot, the diffuse, and the alpha (originally used for the specular, now modified (darker) for reflective) split off so you can see it. Any ideas?

[HafCoJoe]

The more opaque something is the more it reflects so if you make the whole capsule almost invisible except for the windows then it will make all the windows very reflective while the effectiveness on everything  else is almost invisible. In line w/ what @cy4n said

[CobaltWolf]

14 minutes ago, Avera9eJoe said:

The more opaque something is the more it reflects so if you make the whole capsule almost invisible except for the windows then it will make all the windows very reflective while the effectiveness on everything  else is almost invisible. In line w/ what @cy4n said

I'm used to thinking of channels as arbitrary grayscale data. So just, lower value in the alpha channel = less reflective? But I can't see ANY change in the areas that were darker on the alpha...

EDIT: Nvm Photoshop is being a PITA and won't save out a PNG with alpha channel... OR a DDS... I save them, close them, and reopen them... and they're just RGB instead of RGBA...

EDIT2: I think I got it! I pasted in the alpha layer I showed above as a mask for the single layer, rather than an alpha layer. I don't think it was making the connection; again, I'm used to using EXRs with dozens of data channels and just linking them to whatever I need... and my KSP materials have always been smart enough to read my PSD's alpha into specularity.

Which means that before when I got the windows working, it was reading the windows as 1 just by default.

Edited November 3, 2016 by CobaltWolf

[NoMrBond]

5 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

I'm used to thinking of channels as arbitrary grayscale data. So just, lower value in the alpha channel = less reflective? But I can't see ANY change in the areas that were darker on the alpha...

EDIT: Nvm Photoshop is being a PITA and won't save out a PNG with alpha channel... OR a DDS... I save them, close them, and reopen them... and they're just RGB instead of RGBA...

Urg, the alpha channel is never handled properly for PNG's if you actually use the alpha channel, it's infuriating

Instead of RGBA, stick with RGB and create a layer mask (alpha) and put what you want on the alpha channel in the layer mask, when you export to PNG it should work properly (from memory)

[CobaltWolf]

10 minutes ago, NoMrBond said:

Urg, the alpha channel is never handled properly for PNG's if you actually use the alpha channel, it's infuriating

Instead of RGBA, stick with RGB and create a layer mask (alpha) and put what you want on the alpha channel in the layer mask, when you export to PNG it should work properly (from memory)

Yeah I figured it out just now. Thanks!

So if I can get this working, that spawns another question. Since I guess I'll let the configs live in this thread, @Avera9eJoe would I be able to keep two versions here? One with just the usual windows, solar panels etc. Another with the Apollo, Atlas, and Centaur G with the accurate polished metal reflections?

EDIT:

Edited November 3, 2016 by CobaltWolf

[HafCoJoe]

Now the hard part is adding reflections and still having parts look good in comparison to the rest

[CobaltWolf]

6 minutes ago, Avera9eJoe said:

Now the hard part is adding reflections and still having parts look good in comparison to the rest

Do you know if specular still works as well? In which case, is it driven by the alpha of the original texture, or by the one in the replacer folder?

[HafCoJoe]

On 11/3/2016 at 2:32 PM, CobaltWolf said:

Do you know if specular still works as well? In which case, is it driven by the alpha of the original texture, or by the one in the replacer folder?

By specular you mean artificial depth projection on flat textures?

[CobaltWolf]

Just now, Avera9eJoe said:

By specular you mean artificial depth projection on flat textures?

I mean specular highlights - shine, not reflection. I was mostly just curious - most of the shaders I work with day-to-day have channels for both.