Bump map is making my smooth surface to respond to lighting like a flat surface

Never happened to me before and I haven’t done anything out of the ordinary with this material



The project file and texture: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4izbazXuAGMS2lyT0FwT0NjNGc&usp=sharing

The file can’t be accessed without permission. Try posting to pasteall?

Oh, my mistake, should be accessible now

Your bump strength is several orders of magnitude too strong.
If I might add, your node setup is needlessly complicated: If you use the same texture for diffuse and bump anyway, don’t add it twice, but rather connect the same texture to all needed other nodes:


BTW, in general it’s preferable to use the Vector > Bump node instead of the Displacement input of the Material Output node.

On my setup the problem persists regardless of it’s strength


It’s your point light that’s causing the problem – the one right in front of the feet. The easiest fix is to increase the size of that point light, which is currently set to 0.1. Even upping it to 0.3 makes a substantial difference.

Simply turning off that particular light also removes the problem. If you can’t live without that light, you could increase the subdivision surfaces on the boot (from 2 to 4 seemed to work, though that puts more stress on the system). You could also add edge loops, which softens some of those harsh edges: