I have a typical Phong shading with specular light. I have all the parameters tuned so to give appropriate highlights from a point light source. Now the problem I have is a new object that has a large flat surface which tends to face directly towards the light source (which is a bit offset from the camera). It also has a normal map which is primarily in one direction (steel panels). This results in a pure white object.
I have a lot of options to try and work around the problem, but I was wondering if this is a common issue and perhaps there is a clean workaround. The various options I see (and am trying) are:
- Reduce specular map intensity. There are two problems here, first when the object is not facing the camera it looks dull, second on a low quality setting I don't use specular maps.
- Clamp the range of specular light. This of course limits the highlights for the entire scene. It also limits the highlights when the object isn't facing the camera.
- Put a per-object specular light limit. This at least doesn't affect the whole scene, but does dullen this object when not facing the camera.