Normal maps too shiny

[BurntBiscuit]

I've recently been creating some normal maps for some textures, however I've run into a nasty problem. When ever I try to use them, the item becomes extremely shiny and glossy while certain parts become extremely pixelated.

Anyone know why a perfectly good normal map would do this? Could it be too high a contrast?

[nivea]

The alpha layer has been set up wrong, shades of grey to white make it shine and black adds no shine.

a lot of texture makers right now seem to be leaveing those all white sadly so it causes a lot of shine.

[BurntBiscuit]

Right.. but that still doesn't really help me. how must the alpha layer be set up?

[nivea]

Open the texture in photoshop or gimp, fill alpha layer with white -> black.

[Ghogiel]

  On 11/26/2011 at 8:03 AM, nivea said:

Open the texture in photoshop or gimp, fill alpha layer with white -> black.

It's a specular map. A very important map for material definition... not a blank sheet of one color. :pinch:

[cojaca2]

You require a specular map. It is a texture named "<The Name of your Texture>_s.dds" (I believe Skyrim specular maps use _m.dds, actually, but it used to be _s).

 

A specular map, at a basic level, is a darkened grayscale image of your texture (The actual texture, not normal maps or anything). More advanced specular maps are modified so that different parts of a texture have different levels of shine. Open up Skyrim's textures and open any random one with the suffix "_m.dds", you'll see what it is.

[Ghogiel]

  On 11/26/2011 at 11:41 AM, cojaca2 said:

You require a specular map. It is a texture named "<The Name of your Texture>_s.dds" (I believe Skyrim specular maps use _m.dds, actually, but it used to be _s).

 

A specular map, at a basic level, is a darkened grayscale image of your texture (The actual texture, not normal maps or anything). More advanced specular maps are modified so that different parts of a texture have different levels of shine. Open up Skyrim's textures and open any random one with the suffix "_m.dds", you'll see what it is.

No. :rolleyes:

[BurntBiscuit]

Oh I already did the specular map. The strange thing is, I extracted the normal map, edited a little and when I put it back into the game it worked. but when I added a much larger change, it went shiny :/

[CampanaAliquanta]

Lower the alpha on your normal map?

[vurt]

  On 11/26/2011 at 3:55 PM, BurntBiscuit said:

Oh I already did the specular map. The strange thing is, I extracted the normal map, edited a little and when I put it back into the game it worked. but when I added a much larger change, it went shiny :/

 

It doesnt make any difference in skyrim, i've tried pure black, pure white and no alpha, there's absolutely no difference in appearance. The alpha of the normal map is no longer used it seems, instead the have this in a specific .dds.