CFS3 “Shining” tutorial by Corrado La Posta


Introduction

In this tutorial we’ll go seeing what’s inside an M3D for better understanding how CFS3 handles shining and reflecting materials.
In Gmax you can choose textures for the DIFFUSE, SPECULAR and REFLECTIVE channels, the rest (AMBIENT, BUMP, ETC...) is there but just inactive since CFS3 doesn’t use them.

You’ll need an HEX editor to work with.
Pick up one, many are available as freeware on the NET; I use Frheddy.
http://www.kibria.de/


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Part 1: looking inside an M3D file


Open an M3D with your Hex-editor, i am using here as an example the stock me_262a_1a.m3d
First of all you have to locate the Materials and Textures header. Generally it is at the beginning of the file, here it is highlighted for the 262.
Please notice that the materials section is above, this is where we’ll go making mods, and the textures section is below.
BTW,
Texures naming is what you need modding to make a standalone plane.

You have to understand how to number the tetxures now, it’ll come handy later.
Simply start from zero, so that

me_262a_1a_t.dds is # 0
me_262a_s.dds is #1
etc...









Each material is represented by a stream of 36 bytes of code (each one ranging from 0 to ff, that is 255 decimal); this is the meaning of the magic numbers for the first stream

00 00 00 00 type of drawing (solid, line, etc...), usually set to zeros

ff ff ff ff diffuse color (RGB components plus intensity)
lower intensity for transparency effects

00 00 00 ff ambient color (RGB components plus intensity), not used

ff ff ff ff specular factor (RGB components plus intensity)

00 00 00 43 glossiness, usually goes from 00 00 00 40 to 00 00 00 44

00 00 number (see above) of diffuse texture, ff ff if none

01 00 number of specular texture, ff ff if none

ff ff number of reflective texture, none in this plane

ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff unknown and possibly not used

Please notice that both Specular and Reflective textures can be loaded at once; they also have a different effect on the model, have a try.




Part 2: tweaking your own model

Now it’s time for some fine tuning of your model shining. While most of the effects can be obtained directly in Gmax just a few escape the plugin possibilities and here is where you’ll be using these tricks.

- MEDAL REFLECTIVE EFFECT

Put specular factor to 55 55 55 ff
Put glossiness to 00 00 00 42
Disable textures loading but diffuse one (insert ff ff where needed)

- REFLECTIVE CANOPY GLASSES

This is just my suggestion, you can experiment on your own

Put diffuse factor to 32 32 32 65
Put specular factor to e5 e5 e5 ff
Put glossiness to 00 00 00 42


Have fun !

Corrado
Mc5834@mclink.it

http://www.isoliti4gatti.com

November, 3rd, 2004