I tried to re-texture a shield, but for some reason it no longer reflects light!

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/6015/problemdd.jpg (sometimes I wish we can post images directly... oh well)
In the screenshot above, you can see light reflections around her chest and pauldrons, but not on the shield. This is the last obstacle to my perfect shield! Damn!

This happens after I changed the normal map. The real normal map still has the original texture's design, as such the original design appears to be laid under my design, although it reflects light. So I changed it to another normal map, sure enough the original design is gone, but so does the light reflection...

This is what happens when I use the original normal map with my own color map:
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/2104/problem2u.jpg

the other normal map was not mine, I simply searched for a normal map within one of the mods I installed and renamed it. It works quite well with another piece of clothing I tried, but for some reason it is not now...

I do have nVIDIA's photoshop plug-in to create dds files. In fact, I used it to create the color map. Can I do something with it to fix this?

Probably...your normal map needs an alpha channel and the alpha channel needs to be somewhat transparent (alpha channel transparency in your normal map controls specularity or shiniess).

Hope this helps. (If not, there are lots of tuts around concerning normal maps for Oblivion textures.)

A better place to ask about this sort of thing is the CS board....I believe.

Regards,

Hem

P.S. You need to use dxt3 or dxt5 to have an alpha channel.

It's possible that the shield's UV map points to somewhere relatively empty in your new normal map. Your best bet is to create a new normal map based on the new diffuse map.

Found the problem and fixed it! The normal map lacks alpha channel. Copied the grayscaled texture and raised the brightness all the way up. Now I'm all set! Wooo!

Well, that life: new things you discover everyday