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RoughMet.dds I make oversaturates the model and makes the skin darker


Belphe

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Hi,

I hope you can help a beginner skinner 😉

I have downloaded the skin templates and worked with them using Photoshop. I edited a particular skin and exported it to .dds format. By looking at the file structure of other liveries I learnt that RoughMet.dds files are also required. As far as I understand, they define the "roughness/smoothness" of the material. To generate the RoughMet.dds I exported both "Roughness" and "Metallic" layers from the original templates and disabled "Base Color". I also made sure that SNAPSHOT was unticked. Unfortunately, the elements of the fuselage I made my own textures for seem darker in-game than the originals. I am quite sure that the issue is in the RoughMet file as, when running the sim without this file, the skin saturation looks good again and the retextured areas only display "texture missing" message.

Could you please assist me here and let me know which layer from the "Roughness" and "Metallic" groups creating the RoughMet file should be disabled to prevent oversaturation of the model? Or perhaps the issue lays elsewhere..

I'd be very grateful for your help.

Never say never, Baby!

 

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

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Have you all 3 channels; Red, Green and Blue?

Have a look at this Reddit thread which defines the function of each channel

A good idea is to create 3 folders in the PSD and change the advanced blending of each to only allow the specific colour channel to pass; one for R, one for G and one for B. Double click on the folder and deselect the necessary channels, as seen on the attached pic.

It's also a good idea to copy only the necessary parts from the layers you need for a certain channel i.e. If metallic items are on the same layer as fuselage paint, copy just the metallic parts to a new layer and place that in the B folder, otherwise the fuselage paint will have a metallic value assigned (undesirable unless your livery is bare metal). You can see in the two images what I've placed in the Blue and Green folders as an example.

Roughmets can be a real PITA and can sometimes take me longer than the actual painting. Apologies for the bad explanation but if I can help any further feel free to reach out.

 

Untitled.png

1.png

2.png

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Apache roughmets use 4 channels. AO (R), Roughness (G), Metallic (B) and Cavity (A).

Without seeing a screenshot of your work, I'd say you either messed up the AO or the Metallic channels. Both of those can alter how light or dark the skin can look.

The way I go about making my roughmets I usually open up the default ones and keep the Red channel intact. I will then edit the Green and Blue channels to my liking. In reality if I'm only altering the material properties or getting rid of decals from them I will only edit the Green channel.

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Megalax's Livery Studio

My Liveries in the User Files

I'll stick a maple leaf on anything...

 

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Thank you both for your assistance! With your help I was able to fix the issue and saturation on my model looks much better now. 

Edit:

My joy was short-lived. The saturation was OK'ish in the model viewer but in the sim issues came to light 🙂 😕

Shadowed areas are now black as hell and some details have lost their prominence.

Could you explain what AO and (A) mean? Is AO "diffuse map" by any chance and (A) stands for "All"?

I'm sorry, I'm very new to this and my questions are extremely basic..

All I'm trying to achieve now is to simply mimic the material properties, glossiness and saturation of the default skin on one that I modified using roughmet.dds. It seems that I will have to trial and error the advanced blending to get what I want but it's extremely difficult without seeing the effect straight away.


Edited by Belphe

Never say never, Baby!

 

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

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1 hour ago, Belphe said:

Could you explain what AO and (A) mean? Is AO "diffuse map" by any chance and (A) stands for "All"

Diffuse is the colour or paint layer with shadowing or highlighting applied. AO is Ambient Occlusion. It's essentially a map that dictates to what degree areas are shadowed depending on the light hitting the object, in most liveries the AO is 'baked' into the diffuse, but you can define the AO in the red channel of the roughmet. If there were no red channel in the roughmet it would default to the darkest amount of shadowing and makes the texture look darkened or near-black, as it sounds in your case. As Megalax said, copy the default R channel into your roughmet to see how it functions.

A is the Alpha channel. I've not done too much with Alpha channels so will let someone more informed comment but from what I understand the transparency dictates the function (cavity in the AH64), defined by the texture renderer (DCS).

These are the most complicated parts of livery making imo, so you're def jumping in at the deep end but good to learn nonetheless. Did you have a look at the reddit link in my first reply?

1 hour ago, Belphe said:

All I'm trying to achieve now is to simply mimic the material properties, glossiness and saturation of the default skin on one that I modified using roughmet.dds. It seems that I will have to trial and error the advanced blending to get what I want but it's extremely difficult without seeing the effect straight away.

If you want the properties from the default just use the default roughmet, no need to make your own.

 


Edited by CornAddict
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5 hours ago, CornAddict said:

If you want the properties from the default just use the default roughmet, no need to make your own.

Well, this means that I'm not exporting the correct layers, assigning them the correct channels (R, G, B.. I don't know how to "make" a layer an Alpha channel) and/or maybe even exporting some of them twice (?). I don't advance blend anything and leave R, G and B at 100%. However, I'm sure that I don't create the AO layer or assign the Alpha channel at all so this could by it. I also don't clearly understand if R, G and B is to be assigned to the whole pre-made folder such as "Roughness" or " Metallic" or do I group sub folders inside those and assign the channels to them. 

Never say never, Baby!

 

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

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