What you are calling channel, is the intensity color 0-255 for one of the three colors? Red channel is red color 0-255? I'm testing things with outfit studio. In meshes textures I can enter png files to test fast things. With a specular image totally black that thing continue to be glossy lol....
Install Intel DDS plugin for photoshop and you will see the correct RGB channels of normals and cubemaps, with Nvidia plugin the channels are messed up (like the ones in your pictures)... I've been using Nvidia plugin for ages too, but it doesn't handle the new DDS BCn/DXT method of compression, resulting in corrupted or black textures when opened.
NB: If you save a dds in the "Intel Texture Work DDS" then you try to open it with Nvidia plugin it turns out total black, that's always due to unsupported compression format
Excellent! I spent much of the morning experimenting -- trying to figure out FO4 specular maps. Finding this article saved me the rest of the day (probably more)
It is highly complicated to change the specular map texture in this game. The red and green channels define how shiny and how bright the texture is. If I change the red and green channel to 100% white I will get a chrome texture. But this is not the problem. The problem is that the specular DDS file stopps working no matter what file format you try to save it. I tried every file format so far DXT-3 and DXT-5 and the 888 32 bits as well, with or without mipmaps, as 2D texture as cubemap.... nothing works.
I tested unchanged unmodified vanilla specular maps too because I first thought that I am just to stupid to make textures but even original vanilla specular maps stop working as soon as I open them in Photoshop and save them again as DDS file again no matter which file format is used.
The ONLY results when saviny ANY specular map with Gimp or Photoshop is:
a) No shine and chrome effect at all. Everything dull and dark. Everything is so dark almost black that you can`t see any details.
b) Everything (like this screenshot) looks complete overbright and like behind a thick layer of oil and has a thick disgusting oily shine layer (but still no chrome effect or no realistic metal surface). Here for example a planned Version 3 for my Power Armor Exoskeleton and Mech Armors but I just can`t finish it because with the vanilla specular map the tanks have these disgusting like some graphics-glitch looking deformed stripes..................But every time I alter the specular maps the complete mech robot has no shine at all and is almost black / or looks completely overbright greyish and soaked in oil...
I don`t know what`s wrong and what to do. Even if I save an UNCHANGED UNMODIFIED vanilla xxx_s.DDS file the specular map suddenly does not work anymore no matter what file format I try to use. No solution on the internet so far for this problem!
What is wrong? Where might the problem be? Should I try Gimp or should I try to save the Photoshop file as .PNG and try some different DDS file converter? The strange thing is for my pipboy mod I used a specular map file I found here on the nexus and edited it for my own purposes to make the carbon parts shiny, and miracously THIS ONE worked. (It had no colours, just medium gray parts for less shine and light grey parts to make the carbon shine). Editing every other specular map for any other texture does not work.
If anyone finds a solution for the specular maps in Fallout 4, please tell me Without a solution for this problems all my current mod projects are stopped.
Try to use the normal map photoshop action from trophihunter (link is in my Tutorial) and convert the specular from dx10 to dx9. Do your changes now in the darker "dx9 version" and save the map with the 3dc (dont change it back to dx10). Please Tell me if that works for you.
tried to alter specular map for the fedora to remove the battered/scratched parts but it the entire thing just shines now. like you even if i just save the vanilla map the entire thing becomes coated in gloss and looks terrible.
Please tell me how you edit the specular map and how you save it. Have you done it with the photoshop normal map action, the way i described it? I just tried it myself with the fedora and it works - its not perfect, you still have to tweak the specular map a little.
Here is my result http://i.imgur.com/4PtP9yR.jpg
as you can see it is overall a little less shiny - like I said its not perfect, but you can optimize the map until you have the result you want.
I was just being stupid sorry... after installing the new Photoshop plugin everything loads/saves correctly. the action file you mentioned would have also worked i think but as far as i can tell its now unnecessary since i downloaded that plugin. thanks for the reply, now to finish it and add it to the game as a craftable lucky hat =D
Your specular map (like every other map) has 3 Channels. RGB - Red, Green and Blue. You can see it on the third picture in my tutorial. You can click on one of the channels and turn it white with a brush for example.
I have a question regarding alpha channels. I've retextured some of the \Textures\Setdressing files (advert posters and busstop signage), which have an alpha channel to make the poster edges rough/aged looking. My question is this. Are all alpha channels 1-bit? It seems they all have hard edges, as opposed to an 8-bit greyscale alpha channel. Is this an .ini setting, or is it universal to Fallout 4, where alpha channels are thresholded for black/white masking?
specular is the amount the texture reflects light, gloss is self explanatory. Gloss texture has a narrow spread when the texture is white, and a wide spread when the texture is dark. (falloff) chrome usually has a narrow spread.
*EDIT* I retract my statements on this subject for the time being. After re-reading the tutorial and going over the files myself, I see that My understanding of Bethesda's implementation of PBR is clearly incomplete; my statements do not match up with reality. I'm leaving up my original post for those that are interested. Maybe what i've posted can be of some help in divining exactly what Bethesda has done with the metal textures in the game. *EDIT*
Given that we're dealing with PBR here, I suspect that the red and green channels in the specular map are not specular and gloss, but rather roughness and metallic. Roughness acts as an inverted form of the specular maps that we've seen on previous BS games, with darker values reflecting more light (essentially you are painting dust and dirt rather than reflective material), while the metallic channel determines whether or not the surface in question is metal (with lighter values indicating that a surface is metal, and darker values indicating that a surface is an insulator). There's a very good article on the website for Marmoset Toolbag 2 detailing the difference between the PBR Specular/Gloss and PBR Metallic/Roughness workflows; I suggest anyone interested in PBR read it as it is an excellent primer on the subject.
The reason that I suspect we are dealing with PBR M/R rather than PBR S/G is because of the lack of a coloured specular map. My experience with PBR is limited to the work that I've done in Substance Designer, however everything that I've read on the subject suggests that the only workflow to use grayscale for reflectivity is PBR M/R. If someone more experienced with PBR workflows has a different take on the subject, then please feel free to correct me.
It doesn't work like metallic, I tried treating it as such and it just gives you what a black/white specular would (no spec on black bits, full spec on white bits). It's just standard greyscale spec as far as I can tell.
after a quick look at the maps id agree with the spec/gloss PBR where spec controls the material reflectivity i.e "how metal is it?" and the gloss the microsurface, "how rough is it?". I would also guess the Blue channel is the AO map and the _Grad file denotes spec/albedo colour with the diffuse being a rust mask of some kind
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I'm testing things with outfit studio. In meshes textures I can enter png files to test fast things. With a specular image totally black that thing continue to be glossy lol....
NB: If you save a dds in the "Intel Texture Work DDS" then you try to open it with Nvidia plugin it turns out total black, that's always due to unsupported compression format
The red and green channels define how shiny and how bright the texture is.
If I change the red and green channel to 100% white I will get a chrome texture.
But this is not the problem.
The problem is that the specular DDS file stopps working no matter what file format you try to save it.
I tried every file format so far DXT-3 and DXT-5 and the 888 32 bits as well, with or without mipmaps, as 2D texture as cubemap.... nothing works.
I tested unchanged unmodified vanilla specular maps too because I first thought that I am just to stupid to make textures but even original vanilla specular maps stop working as soon as I open them in Photoshop and save them again as DDS file again no matter which file format is used.
The ONLY results when saviny ANY specular map with Gimp or Photoshop is:
a) No shine and chrome effect at all. Everything dull and dark. Everything is so dark almost black that you can`t see any details.
b) Everything (like this screenshot) looks complete overbright and like behind a thick layer of oil and has a thick disgusting oily shine layer (but still no chrome effect or no realistic metal surface).
Here for example a planned Version 3 for my Power Armor Exoskeleton and Mech Armors but I just can`t finish it because with the vanilla specular map the tanks have these disgusting like some graphics-glitch looking deformed stripes..................But every time I alter the specular maps the complete mech robot has no shine at all and is almost black / or looks completely overbright greyish and soaked in oil...
I don`t know what`s wrong and what to do. Even if I save an UNCHANGED UNMODIFIED vanilla xxx_s.DDS file the specular map suddenly does not work anymore no matter what file format I try to use.
No solution on the internet so far for this problem!
What is wrong? Where might the problem be? Should I try Gimp or should I try to save the Photoshop file as .PNG and try some different DDS file converter?
The strange thing is for my pipboy mod I used a specular map file I found here on the nexus and edited it for my own purposes to make the carbon parts shiny, and miracously THIS ONE worked. (It had no colours, just medium gray parts for less shine and light grey parts to make the carbon shine).
Editing every other specular map for any other texture does not work.
If anyone finds a solution for the specular maps in Fallout 4, please tell me
Without a solution for this problems all my current mod projects are stopped.
Do your changes now in the darker "dx9 version" and save the map with the 3dc (dont change it back to dx10).
Please Tell me if that works for you.
tried to alter specular map for the fedora to remove the battered/scratched parts but it the entire thing just shines now. like you even if i just save the vanilla map the entire thing becomes coated in gloss and looks terrible.
hope someone finds a solution to this...
Here is my result
http://i.imgur.com/4PtP9yR.jpg
as you can see it is overall a little less shiny - like I said its not perfect, but you can optimize the map until you have the result you want.
You can click on one of the channels and turn it white with a brush for example.
specular is the amount the texture reflects light, gloss is self explanatory.
Gloss texture has a narrow spread when the texture is white, and a wide spread when the texture is dark. (falloff)
chrome usually has a narrow spread.
*EDIT* I retract my statements on this subject for the time being. After re-reading the tutorial and going over the files myself, I see that My understanding of Bethesda's implementation of PBR is clearly incomplete; my statements do not match up with reality. I'm leaving up my original post for those that are interested. Maybe what i've posted can be of some help in divining exactly what Bethesda has done with the metal textures in the game. *EDIT*
Given that we're dealing with PBR here, I suspect that the red and green channels in the specular map are not specular and gloss, but rather roughness and metallic. Roughness acts as an inverted form of the specular maps that we've seen on previous BS games, with darker values reflecting more light (essentially you are painting dust and dirt rather than reflective material), while the metallic channel determines whether or not the surface in question is metal (with lighter values indicating that a surface is metal, and darker values indicating that a surface is an insulator). There's a very good article on the website for Marmoset Toolbag 2 detailing the difference between the PBR Specular/Gloss and PBR Metallic/Roughness workflows; I suggest anyone interested in PBR read it as it is an excellent primer on the subject.
The reason that I suspect we are dealing with PBR M/R rather than PBR S/G is because of the lack of a coloured specular map. My experience with PBR is limited to the work that I've done in Substance Designer, however everything that I've read on the subject suggests that the only workflow to use grayscale for reflectivity is PBR M/R. If someone more experienced with PBR workflows has a different take on the subject, then please feel free to correct me.