Changing the colours on spell effects

[zombiecurse]

Hi all,

 

I'm trying to make a green version of the effects used for the flame spell. I've had a bit of success by changing a node in nif skope to a custom made gradient. I found something that appears to have an effect on the colour of the spell. The nif mesh for the flames spell (firesprayfx01.nif) has a node called BSEffectShaderProperty (it's node 100 in my file). If you use photoshop to change the greyscale texture (gradflame01.dds), then the texture of the flames spell will change. The problem is, it looks pixelated and godawful, and the change of colour seems to overwrite the nuanced flame textures used by the spell:

 

http://i.imgur.com/AnpEw.jpg

 

Ideas anybody? One thing I don't really understand is, if gradflame01.dds is supposed to be a greyscale, why is it an orange to white gradient?

[steve40]

Looks like it might an be alpha shader. You are probably not saving the modified file with the correct format. Presumably it should be DXT5 or DXT3 with an alpha channel?

I would have thought that the spell effect color was set in the CK in one of the particle shader forms or art files, rather than in the nif?

Edited September 3, 2012 by steve40

[zombiecurse]

Looks like it might an be alpha shader. You are probably not saving the modified file with the correct format. Presumably it should be DXT5 or DXT3 with an alpha channel?

I would have thought that the spell effect color was set in the CK in one of the particle shader forms or art files, rather than in the nif?

 

You were right about the alpha shader. I saved it correctly and it kind of fixed it. The problem is, there are about four different shaders responsible for the colour in the nif file. So, when I change these two shaders (83 and 100):

 

http://i.imgur.com/mF8OE.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/OyLsx.jpg

 

I get this:

 

http://i.imgur.com/jMkMX.jpg

 

But as soon as I change this one (91), which appears to be responsible for some kind of cone of fx and colour directly in front of the caster:

 

http://i.imgur.com/NY6l5.jpg

 

I get this:

 

http://i.imgur.com/6OCNy.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/TkGBe.jpg

 

I have a feeling I'm doing something wrong with the texture on number 91, but I'm not sure what.

 

Edit: I had recorded a couple things incorrectly in this post, notably that it was node 83 screwing things up, when in fact it was 91.

Edited September 3, 2012 by zombiecurse

[zombiecurse]

Definite progress:

 

http://i.imgur.com/Ydys3.jpg

 

Just need to find out where the shader for the little flames produced at the end of the effect is now.

[Syfor]

I'm impressed with what you've achieved here. I thought that I could edit the colours by tweaking shaders and effect in the creation kit, with no success. You have actually found a way to do it! I don't know about half of what you've done to make it, but I think I know what those little flames are. Most spells use projectiles (like flames), but some of them also have an explosion attached to them for when they hit an object. The beam for flames is such a projectile. The explosion has a different art (nif) file so you probably have to do some tweaking in that file as well. When I see this, I have no doubt you can change that explosion as well.

 

I hope you continue with more custom effects, and maybe share them as a modders resource. I'm sure I can make good use of them ;)

[zombiecurse]

I am very certain that I've disabled everything except for the projectile art itself. I'll double-check, but I'm very, very confident that I've unchecked everything else under the projectile except for the sounds and the projectile art.

 

I'm convinced that the flames are attached to some nodes called mover00, mover 01, mover 03, mover04, and mover05. When you play the animation in nifskope those nodes move in and out of the beam/cone in much the same way the flames do in-game (I'll post a picture hopefully later today to explain what I mean). The problem is, I spent literally hours yesterday searching for a texture file attached to those nodes, and I simply cannot find one.

 

As far as I can tell, there are four possibilities:

 

a) The location of the source texture for those flames is buried deep in the nif file, somewhere not immediately accessible under nifskope (a .kf file maybe?);

 

b) There's a flag or a string or something in the nif file that is telling the game to go back into the vanilla bsa files and pull those textures and colours out;

 

c) There's a flag or a string or something in the nif file that's making those flames orange without a gradient texture (this doesn't make much sense); or

 

d) I'm blind and there's a path for a source-texture somewhere in there.

 

I haven't looked at this mod yet, but this guy has done something similar to what I'm trying to do. I might crack open his mod later in the week here to see how he did it. If you come up with anything, let me know. And feel free to drop me a line if you want to know how to get as far as I did. I can tell you where I found the textures and gradient files.

Edited September 4, 2012 by zombiecurse

[zombiecurse]

After messing around with other mods that change the colour of the flames, I've realized that I'm missing a reference to gradflame01.dds somewhere in the nif file. I simply cannot find it. That's the texture it's using for the fire, but the reference is just plain missing. If that texture is replaced with one of the same name (but with a different colour), the colour of the flame changes. As soon as the replacement is deleted, the flame goes back to normal.

 

Does anyone know of a way to search through the nif file to see if the reference is buried in there somewhere?

Edited September 5, 2012 by zombiecurse

[zombiecurse]

You're tricky Bethesda, but I'm trickier......

 

http://i.imgur.com/wJlsO.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/44LBV.jpg

Edited September 6, 2012 by zombiecurse

[bleakcabaler]

Hi, first of all congratulations, doing this was definietly pretty tricky.

 

If you plan on using what you've learned could you maybe change lightning spells to blue, instead of purple?

 

I really dislike the whole purple lightning thing.

[zombiecurse]

Hi, first of all congratulations, doing this was definietly pretty tricky.

 

If you plan on using what you've learned could you maybe change lightning spells to blue, instead of purple?

 

I really dislike the whole purple lightning thing.

 

I don't think I'm going to be getting into the business of taking requests on this. Making a new spell with a new colour is much, much more difficult than I initially thought it was going to be when I set out to do this. The flames type spells in particular, with the number of after-effects on them, are very tricky. That being said, I'm probably going to be putting up a tutorial on how to change the colours of spells (and create new spells with new effect colours) in the near future. If I do, I'll put the link in this thread.