My normal maps are shiny, my textures are fine but in game they reflect light like a mirror. All the supposed easy, simple to follow, fixes turn out to be totally useless. I have GIMP and Paint.net to work with. The latest GIMP google bit said to adjust something in the image sub menu, well the choice didnt exist in GIMP, so again a pointless guide.

Can anyone please just give me a simple way of reducing or elimnating the shininess of textures, please.

Add a layer mask, then color it either black (No shine) or a dark shade of gray, then apply it. This should change the alpha channel reducing the shine.

Took me years to find this out after people telling me nothing but "change the alpha", so hope it helps.

Adding a black layer would just produce a blank, black texture wouldnt it?

I can say how to fix it in Photoshop, although you don't use it.

Open normal map, find alpha channel and paint it black if it's white (Ctrl +I).


Alpha channel on texture.dds sets the transparency (black=transparent, white not)
Alpha channel on texture_n.dds sets the shine (black=dull, white shiny)

Although there are a variety of ways to do it in PhotoShop & the GIMP, it's much simpler in Paint.Net.

1> Load up your normal map
2> In the layer window, double click in the blue region to open the Layer Properties dialog box.
3) Adjust the opacity slider to a low value. Something like 10 would be a good start.
4) Save it (using DXT5 or DXT3 format).

That's it!

You can also download BoltBait's Plugin Pack which adds adjustable transparency to the Adjustments menu.

Good luck.

How about save the texture as a DXT1 WITHOUT alpha?

Stop suggesting to WASTE an entire 8bit texture channel with a black texture. This doubles the texture sfile size, and you are flood filling it with black.

Just ditch the spec map entirely if you are not making a [censored] spec map.

just use the material property spec level to adjust global spec levels on objects.

Specifically, in Gimp, when you "Add Layer Mask", you need to choose the option "Transfer the layer's alpha channel". Otherwise when you apply the layer mask, the transparency change will stick but the alpha channel will remain white, so your object will still be shiny in-game.



What he means to say is that if you don't actually need the object to be shiny at all, it is more efficient to skip all this alpha channel hullabaloo, and save your normal map with DXT-1 compression. Because DXT-1 ignores the alpha channel, your object will not have any shine, just as though the alpha channel was completely black.