I'm still not happy with the shaders we have, everything feels like a compromise.
For some older cars then we have problems any way, trying to combine the glossy black outer strip with the transparent middle, but Stereo's shader kinda fixed that a bit. I've not used it properly yet...
...mainly because newer cars we just define that bit as separate polygons. Also stuff like headlight lenses don't need that control either.
Right now I'm trying to set up glass to be like glass, and I just can't.
The diffuse map is black, since there is no diffuse colour I want in this glass. It's almost totally transparent too like headlight glass is.
But as you drop the alpha towards black the glass gets very transparent but also it's reflection goes right down too.
Ideally we want a shader that is straight glass. Diffuse is just that, and alpha is transparency. Reflection can be controlled by reflect = X parameter... that way we avoid trying to do reflect AND transparency off one channel.
I'm just messing with it now and it looks so much better having rgb do diffuse colouring (if needed), transparency do transparency, and reflect just be the reflection mix amount (almost always going to be 1 on almost all glass any way!)
Just tinkering with a Forza 4 conversion and there is no nice way to do glass. I struggled all those years back with my M3 too (headlights especially), not being able to control transparency and reflection properly and always feeling compromised.
Since most car glass is glassy (ie, top surface is dead smooth and usually underlaid with glass), then reflect=1 seems the 99% most used property irrespective of the diffuse/transparency amount (ie, why compromise the glass shader so we have reflect control when it's hardly ever needed, and if it is then we can use a better shader with another texture imo)
As said, I'll post some samples soon
Dave
For some older cars then we have problems any way, trying to combine the glossy black outer strip with the transparent middle, but Stereo's shader kinda fixed that a bit. I've not used it properly yet...
...mainly because newer cars we just define that bit as separate polygons. Also stuff like headlight lenses don't need that control either.
Right now I'm trying to set up glass to be like glass, and I just can't.
The diffuse map is black, since there is no diffuse colour I want in this glass. It's almost totally transparent too like headlight glass is.
But as you drop the alpha towards black the glass gets very transparent but also it's reflection goes right down too.
Ideally we want a shader that is straight glass. Diffuse is just that, and alpha is transparency. Reflection can be controlled by reflect = X parameter... that way we avoid trying to do reflect AND transparency off one channel.
I'm just messing with it now and it looks so much better having rgb do diffuse colouring (if needed), transparency do transparency, and reflect just be the reflection mix amount (almost always going to be 1 on almost all glass any way!)
Just tinkering with a Forza 4 conversion and there is no nice way to do glass. I struggled all those years back with my M3 too (headlights especially), not being able to control transparency and reflection properly and always feeling compromised.
Since most car glass is glassy (ie, top surface is dead smooth and usually underlaid with glass), then reflect=1 seems the 99% most used property irrespective of the diffuse/transparency amount (ie, why compromise the glass shader so we have reflect control when it's hardly ever needed, and if it is then we can use a better shader with another texture imo)
As said, I'll post some samples soon
Dave