koobas.hobune.stream
Specular Texture with Smoothness Issue
Hi all,
Hoping somebody can help with a problem I'm having with specularity/smoothness in my materials.
My problem is that I don't seem to have control over the smoothness of my material when using a specular map. As i understand it - smoothness is controlled using the alpha channel of the specular map, however whatever I do in my alpha channel seems to have no affect on the smoothness of my material. Even using a black spec map w/ black alpha channel, there is a small fresnel looking effect on my assets (see below) - I would assume that this would have created the same look as the top image. I even tried a black spec map /w white alpha, and still no change (bottom image).
Everything works fine without a spec map plugged in - I can reduce the smoothness/specularity completely - but obviously I need be able to reach the same smoothness values with a specular map included.
I'm using 8 bit PNG's - although I've tried 16 bit PNG's and Targas - but no luck...
I'm hoping I'm missing something obvious as it is quite frustrating! Any ideas as to what might be causing the problem?
On your texture import settings for the specular texture, have you checked the box "alpha is transparency"?
Hi Fortis, Thanks for the quick response. I did try that too yes - I've just double checked again and it doesn't affect it. Out of interest - why might that have been a solution?
Because sometimes the alpha channel doesn't seem to import properly if it's not checked. It was a shot in the dark, but worth a shot.
What program are you using to export the image? $$anonymous$$aybe it didn't export properly? Can you attach the two black textures you are using?
Yep, that's the issue. Both of those images have full 1 for the alpha component. I checked this by opening them in Gimp (sort of an open-source equivalent to PS), and decomposing the RGBA layers. The color channels are black, but the alpha is full on both images. You need to look into how you are exporting them.
Sorry I'm not sure what you mean by 'full'. If you mean just fully black/white colour channels/alpha channel without any change in values for the texture - that's what I'm using just to test the problem. I figured that it would be easier to spot if anything changes if using just black/white. Unless you meant something else?
No, what I mean is that both textures are identical. Each color is (0,0,0,1). They have zero in the color channels, and 1 in the alpha channel. Both of them. So, that's why you have full shininess in your material.
Ah ok, so there's no difference in the alpha channels...weird. I will have to look into that now. Thank you for the help! One step closer...
Just an update - I've found a plugin which exports with the alpha channel in tact, so problem is solved. Not sure when this problem may have started, I've exported alphas from this version of CS6 before...very strange. Anyway, cheers very much for the help, much appreciated!
