Shining objects?

[Rekubot]

I'm not sure whether I should have bumped up the Edit Flags topic, as I think this is related, and I think Vyse made an unanswered topic about this a while back, but basically what I want to know is how to increase shine on an object.

Looking at the Edit Flags Grid, I assumed that Render Specular might make a mesh more shiny in-game, because in the documentation it says:

Specular Enable
This flag allows specular lighting on an object. In order to adjust the specular power or specular color, associate the selected polygons with a XSI Phong material. The color of the material effects the specular color and the specular decay controls how big the specular spot is. The larger the specular decay the smaller the spot will be. If there is an alpha channel in the diffuse texture then it serves as a gloss map (which attenuates the specular per pixel).

Now of course, it seems that Pandemic have a better version of the Edit Flags menu than what we have, because we don't have the specular enable checkbox. So I thought that Render Type 4 (render specular) might be the next best thing.

So I select the polygons I want to make more shiny than others (the metallic parts, basically), and change the render type to 4. The edit flag grid doesn't state that you need a texture for it, but to make the droids shiny they needed an alpha channel didn't they? So I copied my address for the texture with an alpha channel into the Texture 1 box, and pressed OK. Exported to MSH as usual, and stuck the weapon in-game. Now when I move the weapon around in first person view, they don't seem to react more to light, they react more to shadows, meaning that the texture will go dark at any opportunity, but won't become lighter (aka: shinier) than the non-metallic parts. This isn't because the alpha channel isn't bright enough, because I replaced the alpha channel texture with a blank white box and it still didn't make any difference. Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong and if I'm on the right track at all? I'm never right the first time around . Thanks in advance!

[t551]

Try an all-black alpha, too, since a lot of times alpha's will behave the opposite of what you'd expect in the zero engine.

[Epena]

Hmm, could what you did Rekubot be pumped up to create a darksaber? (I don't need one, just thinking out loud here..)

[minilogoguy18]

a specular image does need a imput texture but i dont think it needs an alpha channel, the imput texture should be a copy of your texture but with slightly raised brightness and contrast so that its brighter and when light hits it it layers the brighter texture over, or at least thats how it works for other games.