thx pongo... i'm gonna play with those tommorrow to see if i've got this layered texuring thing down half right... i've been following your other thread regarding highlights and specular mapping...
it was quite helpfull...
i've spent almost the past two days on texturing... my goal is to understand the differences of how to implement the various effects... specularity, bumpmapping, diffuse layers...
i finally managed to get something going in a6 that is starting to look like it came from DOOM3... in other words, i've finally close to getting that plasticy and gooey look i've been aiming for for so long :)

those aren't my base textures i'm working with here, all i'm doing is working on getting a decent normal map and specularity from them (i'm not using a high poly model to gen the normal map from, i'm converting a greyscale image)... i'm almost there... still a ways to go though (as you can see)... but this has been a sobering experience...
getting decent looking results with specmaps and bumpmaps can be a real pain, especially if you don't have the skillz (like i don't)... i used to think that all i needed was a normal map generator and a dx9 game engine, and the rest would be a breeze... was i wrong about that...
i'm gonna give it a try it with the textures you just made available, just to see what i can get... i'll post the results tommorrow (for better or worse)... i'm just too burnt out right now to do anything else... my eyes are shot from these monitors blinding me for the past 15 hours, and i haven't even eaten dinner yet... so i'm about done for now...
--Mike