Allegory: LiliB: KenadeeCole:

abraexonar:

woah

DecemberLarkham: Is this for a tattoo later, or on the body normals

If it’s a tattoo, you have to make sure that your normal/spec map isnt transparent

ThAt is terrifying

- the transparent one will do that, so i made the same thing but flat if you make a transparent normal map/spec the layer has to be masked or it does the thing yours was doing

sorry im a materials nerd

whatever is happening i hope you fix it because i want it

I think Catte.exe is correct, I know I always have to upload my spec and normal as 32-bit tga for appliers otherwise the edges are weird.

transparency on specular and normal is not the same thing as on texture. transparencies on both channels are used FOR specular settings!

the alpha channel for normals/bump map/that blue thing actually changes the numbers set on the specular part- this gets reeeeeal screwy because 0 = black = no shine and 1 = slightly off black = specular to 1 which is FULL all over not sharp shiny.

the alpha channel for specular textures does the same thing, but with environment (old skool shiny)- it's not as woah that's awful, and it's not set as often so you don't see it.

to "alpha" those textures out, you instead set the colour channel to neutral/off. for normals, it 's that weird sort of middle blue that says x = center, y = center, z = up. for specular, set what you don't want to shine to black.

so i was probably confusing explaining what's going on: to try to be a little clearer maybe? alpha channels basically effect the slider on specular/enviro numbers. the alpha channel takes the number set for specular (normal texture) or environment (specular texture), and then effectively multiplies that number by a percentage of the alpha channel.

pure complete white, or no alpha channel is 100% of the number you set in the edit menu for specular/environment. but a percentage of black reduces that number- say you put in 70 for the specular, and you have a 50% grey mask on that normal texture. it will show the specular as if you put 35 in for the specular number instead. and the way specular deals

with numbers means that that is a lil bit weird, since 0 is no shine but low non zero numbers go straight to less defined and more all over softer shine, and high numbers are sharper and brighter shine.

but it means in the same texture you can have a sharper shiny part and a softer all over shiny part. but you NEVER want to set any part of that to full black alpha- for black/specular off, set the colour texture of the specular texture instead of the alpha channel of the normal.

Ok, so I only did normals and didn't even mess with the spec map, I just left it default. So whatever shine it's showing is from the body's OG specmap. And my normal map is a jpeg with no alpha on it at all.

jpegs are not a great choice for SL uploads (compression+compression), but wouldn't do anything with what you're doing. i was kinda wondering before if someone messed up the spec texture, like accidentally put the lower texture in the upper applier.

are those in between light bites actually where they are supposed to be, and not just in the normal texture?

you might try making a spec applier with just the plain 100% white blank texture to see if that fixes it?

Allegory: I'll try that. Another friend suggested I do a spec to see if that fixes it too. >_< Thank you so much, Allegory, you're always really helpful!!!

e_lie: Thank you!!! I didn't do a transparent one, that's what I thought too, at first! I thought maybe I NEEDED the transparency @_@

find the clear materials setting on your body HUD and start again with your applier just to make sure you have nothing going on before you apply your textures.

SLinkbySiddean: Yeah, I did that too. Luckily when I take off the applier I made, it all goes back to normal and is ok. I'm going to try using a white spec map tomorrow and turning my jpeg into a tga file to see if that helps!

Allegory: Ok, set my norms as a tga 32bit, did the all white spec map and this is what I get. https://i.gyazo.com/...

are you uploading-uploading it proper, or using a temp texture to test? (if the former, i super promise not to do anything with it other than try to troubleshoot, if you are willing to trust me with a copy to test it- i might be able to find less obvious issues that way, as i'm a bit unsure of what else it could be!)

i haven't done much with materials on transparent layers, or transparent rigged layers, so there may be some sneaky ass bullshit i've not noticed yet.

Allegory: I solved it! So I took your advice and tried an all white spec map. Still looked terrible, but with SHINE! So then I tried an all black map and it was completely flat and killed my norms. So then I took the normals, made them grayscale, fiddled with the levels and then used that. IT WORKS!

https://i.gyazo.com/...

woo hoo for fixing it! normals can be too harsh the way sl renders them, though i'm still wondering why it was really doing what it was...that was weird.

Allegory: Noooo idea... It's a mystery I'm too noob to solve Haha~