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How do you make weapons/shields transparent?


Sader325

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While I know that is possible to make textures on model completely invisible using the alpha layer in the DDS file, I haven't been able to figure out how to make parts of a model semi-transparent.

 

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/2593/shieldim.jpg

 

This is an image of a project I'm working on, it's a reskin of the elven shield. The blue "gem" areas (other than the middle) are the areas I'm trying to make transparent. So far I can only make them either visible, or invisible.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

 

My secondary Question: How do you make textures glow (kind of like the daedric armor).

 

One more thing, I am EXTREMELY new to skinning, so please keep directions as simple as possible =)

Edited by Sader325
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Transparency is controlled by the alpha layer of the texture. White is opaque, black (or erased in Gimp) is transparent.

 

Glowing is controlled by a texture with a _g at the end of the filename, such as Shield.dds, and Shield_g.dds. Similar thing, white is 100% glow, black is 0% glow.

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You need to use Alpha Blend not Alpha Test. Basically make some shades of grey in the alpha map then in the NiAlphaProperty you need to use an appropriate alpha flag that is a blend one, try 4845.

 

as for daedric glow, well that one is slightly different than using a glow map. But there doesn't appear to be anything to it more than setting the emissive color to something like white then adding in the glow map, I have looked at the flags for someone else and the flags don't appear to be any different, though there is a SF_Glow_map flag but it isn't always used and doesn't seem to be a requirement for enabling the glow map slot

 

Vagrant: glow is controlled in the materials emissive color. the texture is a mask.

Edited by Ghogiel
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Sigh...

 

All of that... essentially meant nothing to me.

 

*EDIT*

 

HOLD ON!

 

The NiAlpha property part is the part that made no sense to me, I didn't know you were talking about using nifskope there (I literally just downloaded it like 5 minutes before I posted). Then I spotted the "NiAlphaProperty" you were talking about.

 

Suddenly everything made sense.

 

Thanks Ghogiel.

Edited by Sader325
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Alright back to the question of glow... I've got the shield to glow. The problem is, the entire shield is glowing instead of just the specific part I want. So apparently I'm doing the glow mask wrong? How do you make/use a glow mask?

 

mhm, I figured that out. but the full shields glowing blue. So somethings up with the way I did the texture in photoshop.

Edited by Sader325
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you are like then 3rd or 4th person in the past few days that has had trouble with getting the glow maps to work. even some really well known and I hope competant modder PMed me about this very thing the other day.. I was just like 'you know, you just do it and stuff' lol

 

I'll try to debug something on my end... real quick, I haven't actually tried anything with glow maps as it happens...

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I actually glanced at the daedric sword too, since they use the glow (right?) and they don't have an emissive color, or even a _g.dds file for that matter.

 

So color me confused.

 

*EDIT*

 

Nevermind.. apparently they do. But its under "BSEffectShader Property"

 

and somethng about a gradisguiseshader02.dds

Edited by Sader325
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like I said about daedric, their set up is actually different. you could go about replicating that set up but you will need to some minor mesh editing to make at least extractions for a new mesh object for the glowy bits..

 

well I just did a bunch of tests, and my results aren't as I expected.. I suspected as few things but then ruled those out with a few more tests, and at this point I really can't say! I tried a few shader set ups and fiddled about with those, even ones with glow maps already in there, but it seemed my test object, an iron dagger, wouldn't use it.

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