Environment/Reflection is White in MaterialEditor!

[zzador]

Hello everybody,

I'm using an old TrueSpace 4.3 and recently I noticed that in the Material Editor every reflective material reflects a non-existant white background which is a littlebit irritating. I remember vaguely that there must be a special environment texture with a special filename at a special location so that trueSpace will take that automatically for reflected environment in the material editor.

Does someone here know what the filename and location is, or do I remember that completely wrong?

[borgcone]

I don't have any solution and am not sure at all.
- Isn't any custom shader interfering with reflectance shaders?
- Isn't any file path specified in tS (e.g. menu "File" - "Preference") interfering with reflectance shaders?
- Does the LWORKS.TSR file have an original (i.e. obviously old) updated-date?
- Isn't there any hint in the LWORKS.TSR file?
- Re-installing tS?

I just experimented renaming LWORKS.TSR to others, and realized that the name list of each shaders is out of the file. I don't know where the list is.

You might get additional information if you show some screen shots of the Material Editor.

[spacekdet]

What does it do if you add a skydome object over the entire scene? The reflective object needs something to reflect...
I seem to remember only the ?environment map? shader had an assignable image (maybe-it's been a long time since 4.3!)
Probably accessed via right click on Reflectance preview sphere.
You also need to enable raytracing in the scene and light options and render scene rather than just the object.
Included scans of manual page.

...

[zzador]

Oh. Thanks. So it is defacto default that white is reflected by mirror shaders in the material editor. Then my memory has failed me here. Might have gotten confused with the environment shader here. Sorry for the trouble.

[spacekdet]

It may be reflecting background color- is that set to white?

[bitkar]

ehm... in material editor? why does it bother you? Just set the material to someting that makes sense in light and physics and paint the object. You can use small window to test render or use area render to see how it looks like. I would not be worried by material editor. If there are reflections, there must be something to reflect there. In the scene it will reflect things from the scene.
I dont understand or I dont see the problem

[zzador]

It may be reflecting background color- is that set to white?

No, changing the background color in the render settings makes no difference. All raytraced reflections are pure white in the material editor regardless of any settings. Surely Environmentmaps are displayed but who uses Environmentmaps today anyways.

ehm... in material editor? why does it bother you? Just set the material to someting that makes sense in light and physics and paint the object. You can use small window to test render or use area render to see how it looks like. I would not be worried by material editor. If there are reflections, there must be something to reflect there. In the scene it will reflect things from the scene.
I dont understand or I dont see the problem

Im currently working on a custom shader collection for tS4.3 that uses path-tracing to solve the rendering equation (Global Illumination shaders). The shaders are computationally too expensive to test them directly in the scene. Besides that I would'nt have interactive response to parameter-changes done in the material-dialog.

So far the shaders are working fine. It just bothered me that for the metal shader with soft-reflections the reflections can't be seen in the material editor preview cause the environment there is just pure white. I thought there might be a way to change that.

Here is an example image of the diffuse shader (Rendered with local light and high sharpness shadowmap):

[spacekdet]

ehm... in material editor?

Oh, I need to read more slowly.
Yes, view of material in the material editor doesn't always match what gets rendered.
To the OP: but how does it render? When you render the scene or area do reflections show up?
If so then I wouldn't stress about how the preview sphere in the editor appears.
The reflection attributes of the shader takes the background color or image into account to create reflections, of course along with other objects in the scene. It isn't generated in the preview, only in the render.

[trueBlue]

Does tS4.3 have a Post Process Editor?

[zzador]

Does tS4.3 have a Post Process Editor?

Post Process Editor.png

Nice try, trueBlue...nice try.

My heart beats for tS4.3 and there's no way around.