[Help] Weird texture behavior

[MSTRPLN]

Hello, So i was playing around after reading this article and somehow it behaves differrent for me

It looks fine:

until i shine a light on it:

 

Client: Default
Grid: Beta
Diffuse: no alpha
Normal map: standard 128,128,255 color with specular as alpha saved: .TGA 32
Specular map: white solid color with darker & contrastd specular saved: .TGA 32

 

Specular:

 

However the demo from the article shows just fine:

[Drongle McMahon]

Looks like too low setting for "Glossiness" (specular exponent).

Specular reflection as added to the diffuse reflection (in contrast to environmental reflection, which replaces diffuse reflection) and can have this kind of washing out effect if it is too unsharp. The specular reflection at any particular location is determined by a combination of the geometry with three other factors. It's sharpness, that is the tightness with which it is constrained around the angle of perfect refletion depends on the specular exponent, which is controlled spatially by the values in the specular exponent map (in the alpha channel of the normal map) and globally by the value of the "Glossiness" setting. The combination these two factors appears to be multiplicative. Then the intensity and colour are controlled spatially by the specular map RGB channels and globally by the setting of the specular color. Also, as the reflection is sharpened, more reflection gets concentrated into smaller areas, which increases the intensity there. It is very easy for the reflection to become saturating, obscuring the diffuse texture completely.

So the way to reduce this washing-out effect is to increase glossiness, directky and/or by darkening the a;lpha channel of the normal map, and/or to decrease the intensity of the specular reflection by darkening the specular map and/or darkeing the specular color. You have to play around to find the mosr effective values. They will depend on what lighting conditions you will be using.

Here is an example. There are five discs with the same diffuse texture. The one on the left has no normal or specular map. the next four all have the same normal map, which is supposed to make the gold parts appear to protrude. It also has an alpha channel that modulates the specular exponent spatially. The second disc also has a specular map applied, but in the last three it is blank white, as in your example. The glossiness is set to 20 for the third disc, which exhibits the washout effect with the light from a local light above the camera. In the fourth, this is partially mitigated by setting a gray specular colour to reduce its intensity. \in the last, instead, the glossiness is set to 128 instead. Neither of these is as effective as using the proper specular map. 

For what it may be worth, here are the normal and specular maps RGB (half size). The alpha channels of both were identical to the specular map as shown here.

[MSTRPLN]

Thank you, Lowering the Glossiness to even 10 i got this:

Looks more like a vector o .o I'll try your other solutions, hope one will work

Edit: Changing textures worked., no idea how or why.

Normal & Specular (also used on both alphas) (half size):