Material Editor
1) MilkShape and Materials: Understanding the "Materials Tab"

I'm Just going to talk briefly about Material types and what those nifty buttons are for. First thing you should know about is the different kinds of materials that are used in most 3D applications.

There is constant which has no highlights and no shadows. Here is an example of Constant:


Next is Lambert. This has no highlights but does have shadows. Here is an Example of Lambert.


Now beyond this there are a few others that are all simmilar but look more or less the same. The only real difference is how they calculate the highlights. The most common is Phong and most likley the one Mete uses for MilkShape. There is also Blinn which is prized when doing a shiny car in 3d in the more detailed 3d packages since it give's you a better highlight across irregular surfaces. Anyway, here is an example of Phong which has Shadow and Highlights.


Ok, so now you know a bit more about 3D materials. So how do you do any of this stuff in Milkshape and how and when should I use these? Well let's start with the material interface:


There are some more terms here that you should be aware of. First is the Diffuse which is your objects main colour if your object were painted, Diffuse would be the colour you painted it with.

Next is the Ambient. Ambient is the shadow area or surrounding effect. Typically it's used as the shadow however it can be coloured. An example is if you were to look at an object in a real world area that when light is cast on it, it is never really black or even just a darker colour on it's shadowy side. Sometimes they may have a more blue colouring to it or even a red or green hue in the shadowy area even though it is not any of those colours it self nor is the light. Anyway, suffice it to say it does have real world applications but for games black is probably the simplest choice.

Next in line is your Specular. Specular is the highlight. If it is a glossy object chances are it's got a specular highlight. The highlight can also have it's own colour and this again is seen in real life examples. Materials that are one colour and yet a complete other in the highlight can be seen in costumes for stage (or back in the 80's on the average person but lets not go there) again the most common choice for games would likley be white.

Last is the Emissive. Well for this we need to think about what Emissive is. Well it is the colour it Emits like a lit object. This doesn't make it an actual light source though so don't go expecting to turn this up and have glowing characters. What it will simply do is take the the Ambient and Diffuse and bring them up to that colour. if you bring it all the way up to white you will lose the specular as well. This is what you would likley use to make a constant material. This is also usefull when creating geometry that is supposed to be the physical representation for a light. While the object itself does not emit light it will apear as if it is the source of the light.


Now you will notice as well there are two sliders. The one to the left is your specular highlight control. It changes how spread the highlight gets across the surface. a smaller highlight would likley be on something like plastic or glass and a wider specular would be seen on skin or frosted glass. The other slider is for transperancy of the object. This won't work unless you have a texture on it .. or so it would seem.

Now you also have the two slots that say (none) on them, those are for your Textures. The first is for your object map. The other is your alpha map. An alpha Map is a greyscale image that usually makes white fully solid and black fully transparent. So the greys are various levels of translucency.

Now Lastly, we should discuss some of the uses of these tools. I've dropped comments of where they could be used but lets just mention them again.

Specular levels and controls are important for what kind of surface you are trying to create. A bright and tight specular is a glossy object like metals, glass, and plastic. For this you keep the specular small and use a white or very bright colour. For something like skin though it's not quite so shiny. For that you would like to spread it a bit, not too much but a bit, and lower the brightness of the specular. Making it dimmer and thus allowing it to be less shiny. A Dark grey is fine for this. If you drop it down to black you get something that has no shine at all. Like dirt or fabric.

Emissive is again the way to get something to look as though it's glowing. You can use this in various degrees though. You can give a low emissive value to something simply to make it stand out against the rest of the objects in your game even in a dark room. It doesn't have to be very high just enough that you can barley make out the shape in a nearly black room. For higher levels you can use it to make things like lava which still get's some shadow but not much of a light that get's no shadows on it. A medium Emissive would be practically used for something like a lampshade. It's emitting light from behind it but yet can still have shadows cast across it.

Playing with the specular, diffuse, and Ambient you can create some interesting effects. For example you could set the specular to a bright yellow and the diffuse to an orange and the Ambient to a deep red, then even add some red with the emissive and you have a fireball. Add a texture to it for even more detail.