Hmm, been trying to work this out on my own without bugging folks, but I'm stumped. So I'm asking for a little advice about DX9's fixed rendering pipeline. So, I have this spaceship: And as you can see, it's got specular hilights on it. Currently, they are calculated across the entire object on a per vertex, which makes it look very "plastic-y". I understand that gloss maps are used to enhance specular hilights by using multitexturing. From what I gather, you disable the built-in specular hilight calculation and then use a gloss map to change how an environment map is rendered across your object, so you get both a simulated reflection and specular variance at the same time. So I want to apply a gloss map to my environment map. I understand that I should take the env map, modulate it by the gloss map (that being a simple ramp of how much I want the env map to contribute) and then add the result to the base texture. But I'm not sure how to express this in the multitexture pipeline. How could I modulate the env map and the gloss map BEFORE they are added to the base texture? I can't do it after, because then my modulated map overwrites the base texture. I feel like I am missing something real obvious on this. PS: My goal is not to use vertex/pixel shaders here, but DX9's fixed pipeline. EDIT: This isn't vBulletin. --- http://www.gapingwolf.com [edited by - FenrirWolf on October 15, 2003 5:37:19 PM]

Hey, thanks. That points me in the right direction. My days of 3d modeling have screwed up my perception of how multitexturing really works. I was trying to use texture stages in terms of layers. So I was saying to myself, "But how do I overlay the env*gloss map on top of the base texture?" In other words, I was trying to do base+env*gloss, which is an entirely different formula!

I think I understand now why people say "think of it as math" when it comes to 3D blending operations...

Man, I feel stupid now.

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http://www.gapingwolf.com