Texture cannot use themselves as a Reference in the Composite Texture Field

Summary

In UE 5.8.3 when you attempt to reference a texture as it’s own composite texture you get the following error:

LogTexture: Warning: Cycle detected: Requested composite texture has this texture as its composite texture!

Ideally when generating the composite texture the original source image would be referenced not the generated texture. But more importantly the channels other than the Red and Green of the texture should be available to have the effect applied. This allows a texture to pack the R and G channels with normal data and then have the B or Alpha channel contain the roughness, allowing for the composite to apply specular aliasing to the mip chain.

What Type of Bug are you experiencing?

Editor

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Launch Unreal Engine 5.8.3
  2. Import a texture
  3. Open the texture in the asset editor
  4. Attempt to change the “Composite Texture” to reference the newly created texture

Expected Result

The texture should be able to be applied as the composite texture and apply the specular aliasing to its mip chain. Alternatively a checkbox to “Use Self” and a selection of modifying the blue or alpha channel.

Observed Result

LogTexture: Warning: Cycle detected: Requested composite texture has this texture as its composite texture!

And the texture is not applied to the composite texture slot

Affects Versions

5.8

Platform(s)

Windows

Additional Notes

Here is the documentation on the composite texture:

I realize this does have some work arounds but it’s a shame to lose functionality that should be able to work and allow for performance optimization along with quality improvement.