How to make glowing eyes

[BetrayalSeeker]

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Edited October 11, 2013 by BetrayalSeeker

[Elleh]

Don't know exactly how to do this yet, but I want to figure it out.

 

The problem is that you can't use an emissive mask and an environment mask at the same time in the same shader property. Like you described, you can make the mesh glow but you can tell it where to glow. It is worth mentioning that the color and intensity of the glow is affected by the colors of your diffuse texture. If you have an area on the diffuse map that is completely black (or just very dark), it wont glow. So with some eyes you can get away with it, such as:

 

 

http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h383/EllehBella/eyes_zpsb9eeb6a2.jpg

 

 

The outer parts in the diffuse are black, so they don't glow. The actual emissive color is a bright red, so that mixes with the orange-y pupil.

 

I know that wasn't very helpful, but I'll come back if I find something. :smile:

[BetrayalSeeker]

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Edited October 11, 2013 by BetrayalSeeker

[Elleh]

... as far as I know, you can only have one shader type per tri shape. I assumed vampire eyes somehow used a decal mesh (like blood on weapons), but I just had a look and that wasn't the case. Vampire eyes use the standard eye nif, so maybe it's something there? Maybe it is a decal somehow? The nif has a "BSDecalPlacementVectorExtraData" node, but I'm not totally sure what that Is for, and I can't seem to find any "vampire eye decal" in the CK or BSA's.

 

And yes, the diffuse map refers to the "main texture" or the "color map."

 

I'm going to look into that mod and at Dawnguard, because I think Dawnguard vamps have something slightly different. At least, when I first played it I got a pretty cool effect:

 

 

http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h383/EllehBella/eyes2_zps165c6a14.jpg

 

 

But that turned out to be a glitch, I think? Curious......

 

EDIT: Had a look at the "eyesmalevampire" nif from Dawnguard. First thing..... Dawnguard actually uses a separate nif, unlike vanilla (obviously, ahaha.). The mesh most definitely glows - and glows a very bright orange. There is no glow map flag, and the shader type is EyeEnvmap. How then....?? I'm going to try grabbing the shader from that mesh and put it on my own.... see what will happen.... I very much want "legit" glowing eyes for my character as well.

Edited June 2, 2013 by Elleh

[Elleh]

Okay, after a bit of fiddling around I'm pretty sure I know what's going on here. It's a bit surprising, and pretty simple.

 

I tried copy/pasting the shader property directly from the Dawnguard vamp eye nif, and pasting it into my custom dremora eyes. (That Underworld mod uses the same shader type, btw.) The only texture I changed was the diffuse, and I changed the emissive and specular colors to something more appropriate. In game, the eyes glow without the aid of a glow map or glow shader type - I'm assuming the "Eye EnvMap" shader type has glow built in.

 

Thing is, the entire eye was still glowing in a similar manner to that screenshot I initially showed you. Dark parts not glowing, orange mixing with red emissive color, etc. What I think is happening here is just a clever manipulation of the intrinsic properties of Skyrim's glow. After carefully comparing the nifs and textures of vanilla Skyrim, Dawnguard, and that mod, I am almost entirely certain of this.

 

Here's how I believe they did it:

For that mod, they set the emissive color to white at a fairly high intensity. The diffuse texture that is applied then interacts with the glow. The irises are a very brilliant and light blue, thus the white light being emitted from the mesh "shines through" the blue like a gel filter. Voila. Blue glow. To compensate for the entire mesh glowing, the sclera was made a very dark gray. You can clearly see the difference when comparing it to a normal vanilla eye texture. When the white glow shines through that, it is dampened by the increased amount of black and balances out into something that appears to be a normal, non-glowing white.

 

As for glow being built into the Eye EnvMap shader type, vanilla eyes compensate for this by having the emissive color set to pure black. Obviously, the color black cannot emit light. Science.

 

So there you have it. You can have eyes that both glow and have an environment map. Instead of using a glow mask to dictate where the mesh glows, you just need to get crafty with the diffuse texture.

[BetrayalSeeker]

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Edited October 11, 2013 by BetrayalSeeker

[Elleh]

Yeah, that's what I was saying. Well, I guess it technically is glowing. But if the mesh glows white, and the texture is nearly-black, and the result is normal-eye-white - is it really that different from not glowing? I bet if you tweak it, you could get a perfect balance.

 

I confirmed my theory after reading through the mod's comments. On page 25, the author says "Update: New version 1.3 has different eyeballs, they are darker to make the eyeballs themselves less glowy, meaning the glow is pretty much from the iris now. The old files are still downloadable as Optional Files in case someone prefers the whole eyeballs to glow". If you go back to earlier pages, you will see people commenting about the entire eyes glowing.

 

If you know a bit about modeling, you might be able to manage to make a nif with separate tri shapes for the iris and sclera. The sclera could use an e-map shader and the iris could us the glow shader. Or, you could place a circular plane in front of the iris, export it as a separate tri shape, give it a strong glow and make it partially transparent with an alpha property. Or you could duplicate the eyeball and place a copy just slightly in front of the original. You could then make the front mesh glow, and use alpha transparency to make everything but the iris and invisible. I assumed vanilla Skyrim did something like that until I researched into it further - that's what I meant about a "decal mesh" in my earlier post. It'd work the same way as blood on weapons. You could also look into how draugr eyes work. Don't know much about it, but it's more of a special effect/spell type thing.