How to remove unwanted shine (smoothness) on terrain?

Question

Is there any way to turn off the smoothness without reverting to the legacy shader?

What you can see on the screenshot below is a unity 5 terrain with the new shader and some textures. Given the camera/terrain angle and a directional light, a very bright shinny area appears over that texture (since it is the cliff texture I guess). The texture itself is a png with NO alpha channel. Changing the smoothness factor towards 1 just concentrates the shine, but it won't disappear.

It seems really unnatural to have shinning dirt and rocks :S (would look good for metallic/lustrous floors)

Screenshot

Link to screenshot

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by ahgr123 · May 23, 2015 at 05:11 PM

You NEED alpha channel, if theres none it will be intepretated as white which is high shine, add alpha channel in your image editing program and color it to black. It solved issues with shine for me.

Add comment · Show 9 · Share

TieSKey · May 23, 2015 at 08:42 PM 2

Share

Thx, this works. But wow, I have to say this is bad design from Unity. Having to add a completely black (fully transparent) alpha channel to a texture to remove a shine that's not useful at all for opaque/diffuse textures is stupid for several reasons:

jpg doesn't support alpha
Windows will preview such textures (at least for .png ones) as a complete transparent image, making it hard to spot.
Image edition programs will show a fully transparent image... u have to deactivate the alpha channel to work on it.
The extra channel takes more space. By default the jpg texture was compressed to DXT1 for around 170$$anonymous$$b. The same texture as png with alpha channel was compressed by unity to DXT5 for around 340$$anonymous$$b.

ahgr123 · May 24, 2015 at 12:59 PM 1

Share

Agree, and it also takes lots of time to do.... I mean one texture is good, but when you have them 300 ? Then you are f**ed.

Bunny83 · May 24, 2015 at 01:22 PM 0

Share

$$anonymous$$eep in $$anonymous$$d that if you import the image with "read / write access" you can add / change the alpha values at runtime.

But i agree that it would be more useful if they either provide a seperate shader which doesn't calculate specular highlight at all, or have some kind of option to turn it off. The first solution would make more sense since it would increase the performance.

Ahmed Abdul Salam · Jan 18, 2016 at 04:28 PM 1

Share

Can u Pls pls show me how to fix this metallic shine problem..? i would be rly glad.. iam enough dumb and new to this area and this unwanted $$anonymous$$ETALLIC shine is causing disaster in my terrain texture..

i wish you would help me with a detailed STEP-BY-STEP approach / video approach..

Thanks

PS: if i didnt reply to this msg here.. then i rly wish you to reply me to my email

gmail = ga.abdulsalam@gmail.com

ahgr123 · Jan 19, 2016 at 04:12 PM 0

Share

Ahmed Abdul Salam... here it is..it's not my video though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T5utHSSu5w

Show more comments

Answer 2

Answer by Damiankarlfriston · Aug 25, 2015 at 08:21 PM

I don't know of this helps anyone, but I just came on with the same question. If you click on the terrain gear icon and click on "Material" and set it to "custom" that took away the glossy shine for me. I'm not very experienced with Unity so I don't know how this could negatively impact your project, but for me it was a quick fix, if that's what you're looking for. Good luck!

Add comment · Show 4 · Share

TieSKey · Aug 25, 2015 at 09:10 PM 0

Share

The default terrain shader is optimized (or it should be) and has some special "features", changing it to custom and leaving it "blank" will make it use a plain diffuse shader I guess. It may remove the shine but will probably look bad and slow. $$anonymous$$ay work for small, simple terrains though :P

uveritegames · Mar 25, 2016 at 10:25 PM 0

Share

this worked for me

$$anonymous$$ · Jun 16, 2016 at 07:49 PM -1

Share

Just came across this and thanks Damiankarlfriston. $$anonymous$$uch better than the overly complex answers often given.

The-Sam · Jul 16, 2016 at 07:19 AM 0

Share

This worked for me without messing up my lighting work. Thanks!

Answer 3

Answer by sporkflips · Dec 15, 2016 at 03:43 AM

Another alternative is perhaps to select the texture and change the Alpha Source in the inspector to "None"

Add comment · Show 5 · Share

BrandonHill · Feb 02, 2017 at 08:07 PM 0

Share

This is the correct solution I$$anonymous$$O - default import settings are "Alpha Source = Input Texture Alpha" even for JPGs. Setting this to "None" is what you should do for all JPGs (actually, Unity should), and also the Terrain Texture Editor window is aware of this setting and exposes a "Smoothness" slider as an equivalent for images without an alpha channel.

Bunny83 BrandonHill · Feb 03, 2017 at 03:45 AM 0

Share

As far as i can tell, this is a "quite new" setting. The question and answers are from mid 2015

TheGreatCabbage · Mar 22, 2017 at 02:10 PM 0

Share

That works well for me. Thanks!

abstractfragment · Feb 23, 2020 at 10:01 PM 0

Share

Working in Unity's HDRP and I had this issue. This solution completely solved the problem.

drewjosh · Jun 15, 2021 at 07:30 PM 0

Share

You are amazing! This should be the accepted solution what the heck?!

Answer 4

Answer by SGT_GQ · Feb 04, 2017 at 08:21 AM

Click on the material, go to Alpha Source and change to - From Grayscale

Add comment · Show 4 · Share

Spyter · Mar 13, 2017 at 12:26 PM 0

Share

This resolved the issue for me. Thank you so much! I've been forum hunting trying to find a resolution..

drewjosh · Jun 15, 2021 at 07:31 PM 0

Share

This didn't work for my texture (png). It helped to put it on None.

ChrisRArendt · Mar 03 at 04:05 AM 0

Share

Worked for me thank you so much!

JasonJ1968 · Apr 23 at 01:46 AM 0

Share

Alpha Source "None" did not work for me but, "from Grayscale" did, thank you

Answer 5

Answer by olok · Mar 06, 2017 at 04:17 PM

Go to Terrain Setting change Texture to Built In Legacy Diffuse

Add comment · Share

How to remove unwanted shine (smoothness) on terrain?

7 Replies

Your answer

Follow this Question

Related Questions