Specular Maps

[olishea]

So what's the best way of making a specmap from a texture? Any good advice out there?

A lot of tutorials have conflicting methods.

Suggestions?

[Solo]

What image editor do you use?

I have a method using Paintshop pro.

[olishea]

Photoshop. I have gimp but I hardly use it.

[Phil Meadows]

Solo, give us your method. I use Corel Photo-paint but they all have the same basic and intermediate tools. Terminology is different but that can be overcome.

[olishea]

Just a general help would do. I don't understand the colours and how they affect the type of reflection......

[Ecuadorian]

I think reflection maps act as a multiplier of the reflection channel.
That is, the whiter the color, the more intense mirror-like reflections you get for those parts. Black parts in the reflection map mean there's no mirror-like reflection there.

[Pg09]

Oh so spec map = reflection map? I learn something every day

[Fletch]

We used the term "Reflection Map" because new users who have never used any other rendering application don't know and likely don't care what "specular map" means... so, apologies to the advanced users, but we wanted to keep it simple.

This is explained hopefully quite clearly in the reference section of the user manual in the overview of how Reflection maps work in Twilight.

White= 100% specular reflection
Black= zero specular reflection
and in-between is a percentage of in-between.

The specular map can contain color. This will define the color that will be given to the specular reflection. This is demonstrated in the Intermediate Video tutorial.

[olishea]

You should have just written read the manual

im a fool!

[Fletch]

I've written that several times today... starting to give up... just kidding! I'm not even close to giving up.