From the readme:
Purpose:
Directx 9 Effect file, for real time previewing of San Andreas vehicle materials in the 3ds Max viewport. The purpose is to emulate San Andreas style material "blending" - reflection and specular levels, etc - Not carcols or other game data. The shader is for previewing purposes only - the data in this material cannot be exported separately.

This effect was developed and tested with Nvidia's FX Composer 1.8, and 3ds Max 2008 and 7 (using the Direct3d 9 drivers).
Works perfectly (for me) in max 2008. In max 7, the object the material is applied to is transparent, and "bool" variables will not have controls in the rollout.

Installation Instructions:
Extract the "GTADXMaterial" Folder somewhere on your system (preferably in your 3dsMax install, under "Maps").
Start 3dsMax and create a "DirectX Shader" material; - Discard old material.
Click on the button with the file path of the Default effect file, and navigate to the folder where you extracted the "GTADXMaterial".
Select the "sa_vehiclemat.fx" file and accept it.

Material properties:
Main Light (Directional): Light that this material will be rendered with. Must be a directional light.
Material Color: Diffuse Color of the material.
Material Ambient Amount (RwAmbient): Multiplier for the ambient effect of this material. Keep it low.
Material Diffuse Amount (RwDiffuse): Multiplier for the diffuse effect of this material. Keep it at one.
Material Alpha Amount (RwAlpha): Multiplier for the opacity of the material (1.0 is opaque, zero is transparent).
Enable Alpha: Enables Alpha Blending on diffuse texture and Material Alpha Amount (see above).
Specular Power (R*): Specular Intensity and "Power" (Glosslevel) for materials. Rockstar used one number for both! The specular intensity is equivalent to (Glosslevel / 100.0) in a standard material.
Enable Spec: Turns specular lighting on/off.
Reflection Color (R*): Color of reflections for Non-UV2 reflection maps. Best to keep it white.
Reflection Amount: Multiplier for overall intensity of reflections. Affects standard and UV2 reflections.
Diffuse Texture: Diffuse texture.
Diffuse Texture Map Channel: Map channel that the diffuse texture will use. Should always be channel 1.
Reflection Texture: Reflection texture. Needs to be 2d - not a cubemap.
Reflection Texture Map Channel: Map channel that UV2 reflections will use. Should always be channel 2.

Techniques:
Untextured: Material with no textures applied.
Untextured_Ref: Material with only a Non-UV2 reflection map.
Untextured_UV2Ref: Material with only a UV2 reflection map.
Textured: Material with only a Diffuse texture applied.
Textured_Reflective: Material with a Diffuse texture and a Non-UV2 reflection map.
Textured_Reflective_UV2: Material with a Diffuse texture and a UV2 reflection map.
The material will automatically use and blend the alpha of the Diffuse texture if "Enable Alpha" is checked.

As the name implies "UV2" reflections use the uv coordinates on map channel 2 (which YOU need to apply!). The "standard" non-uv2 reflections use projected uv coordinates (they're calculated interally) that cannot be tweaked. They also "tile" based on your viewing angle. This is intentional, as the game does the same thing. They're supposed to look broken because they are. Fixing this in my material will not fix how they look ingame.

Technical Info:
There is no actual "shader" present, only a collection of States that were extracted from the exe, and while running the game through PIX.

Revisions;

01 (current):
Fixed ambient amount from main light.
Tweaked some default values, removed extraneous comments from file

00:
Initial release.

DexX
2005-2010
11:21 AM 12/23/2009