[SOLVED] Object Specular Looks Different After Update

Hi! I really can't tell without seeing it. Can you share the blend and package file? Is your issue related to the shiny parts that are reflecting or the intensity?

If you're still using the same specular, then maybe they changed something in the game after the update. Have you tried looking to other metallic surfaces in your game and seeing how the specular is reacting?

This texture is the CubeEnvMap and is basically the light reflection that you would get if you placed an object into a square room with a window in the middle of each wall. It's the game's way of faking real light reflections on metallic and glass surfaces (or anything with a high specular setting).

If you go into edit the material definition of your LODs you can see the CubeEnvMap listed and the Instance of the texture it is using. If you can locate that file (as it won't be pulled into the package) then you could possibly edit it to be slanted how you would like it to be and then import it into your package and update the CubeEnvMap entries to point to your new texture. Might be worth a shot.

You've found it wonderfully!

What you want to take from this is the Instance number and Type of the CubeEnvMap and try to locate it within the game files. I honestly don't know the best method to go about this. Then you can extract it and make your own. When you import it to your package you will have to make sure to give it a new Instance so that it doesn't override the original one the game uses for other objects. Then you need to go and change the details in the window you have in your screenshot to point to your new image file.

One your step 5, that "ton of options" represent each different swatch for your object and any other states they have such as burnt or dirty, etc.
It's really time consuming to do after you have added all your swatches but any changes you make will have to be done for all of those entries. Unless there are some you don't want to alter in which case it is perfectly fine to leave them be.

The Dropshadow entries refer to the ground shadows for your object so they can be ignored as well as the PhongAlpha entry which will be for your glass parts.

You will also need to repeat these steps for the Model resource listed in the left on the very first Warehouse window. This affects the lower level LODs whereas the Model LOD does the highest LOD.

It's not a very complicated task but there is a LOT of clicking and text pasting involved.
Alternatively, you could delete all of your swatches except for the first one, make your changes and then add the other swatches back as they will copy the details of the first swatch.

I figured out how to find it but I'm not sure about how exactly to edit it.
If you open Studio you can use the cheat console, opened the same way as in game with Ctrl-Shift-C, to view objects without actually having to clone them. Open the console and type in "object-preview" without the quotes. A new window should pop up if it worked. Now just find an object with high reflectivity, probably something with glass, and then go to the Texture tab. The CubeEnvMap texture is shown here as the first texture at the top and it can be extracted with the button at the bottom.

The thing that has me confused now is that it looks like a single square texture in Studio but if you open it in an image editor then it is actually a long rectangular image with six versions of the cube, all slightly different colours. Maybe something to play about with some time? This is new territory for me too.

menaceman44 What is this magic? The cheat console is so cool!!! I would have loved to know about this from the get go I have so many "test" packages lying around where i just wanted to steal a texture here or a mesh there but this makes things much quicker. Brilliant! Also I see what you mean with the cube map very interesting I've not seen one like this before. I've noticed when you save as DDS and then re-open it the files seem to show like every size down from what you initially set going horizontally like a weird infinity shot lol but I've never seen one like this with multiple colours in a long line up. Very weird and I'll definitely play around with this in the future. Thank you for bringing this up!

peacemaker this is awesome and totally did the trick. You're right it's not like how I managed the first pass but it still does exactly what I want which is the shine animates across the object when you move rather than the painted on look that most in game objects have. I was so excited I took a quick video lol Thank you very much for this tidbit as it gives me more to think about when modelling in the future. I honestly thought it was a mapping issue so I tried multiple ways of mapping the horizontal bars. I've watched some of Blender Guru's videos and did some of a Udemy course but to be honest I go super intense trying to learn and then burn out and then come back later having forgotten a bunch of stuff. So now I'm just diving in with what knowledge I have and googling my way through the rest while banging my head against the wall. This was a big help and I can finally call this object in the set DONE and move on to the next. Thank youuuu!!!

blackgryffin I'm really not sure but I would maybe start with lowering the Alpha? It looks like it's full white when I look at the file see below:





Like maybe do a selection on the white portion and in the alpha channel fill with 50% grey as as start and see what that does? Playing with the channel mixer on the normal layer would be my next thought but I really don't know what each section represents since there's more than three. However changing the shape of it might be interesting if you don't want a cube?