Adding a Glow-Map to an object that normally doesn't Glow?

[adamWeiler]

I know I've done it before, but I can't quite remember all the steps. Sofar I've:

-Extracted the regular.nif, regular.dds and normal.dds files

-I've imported the regular.dds into Photoshop and saved it as a glow.dds. (Not sure which settings to use here. DXT 1?)

-I've added the glow.dds onto the regular.nif right under the normal.dds.

-I've copied all these files into my Data folder.

*All the files are named properly, I just wrote them that way for easy reference.

 

I know some changes are happening because I also altered the regular.dds file and it's showing up in game, however there is no glow. Thoughts?

[micalov]

set the immersive colour to white in the nif properties

[adamWeiler]

There are 2 NiMaterialProperty and I've changed the Emissive Color for both of them to white, but it doesn't seem to have an effect. Do I need to change the Glossiness, Alpha, or Emit Multi values? I also deleted the BSShaderNoLightProperty which I thought might be cancelling the Glow map for some reason.

 

For reference, I'm trying to add a Glowmap to the Metal Box container.

[adamWeiler]

Okay, so I've tested and retested and I still can't figure it out. It's very frustrating. I've attached the files if you could take a look at them. I'm using one of the Big MT metal boxes from OWB.

 

Here's my checklist of things I have done properly:

-I have HDR enabled.

-I took a random glow map from another mod to see if it would show up. (Nope.)

-I've tried saving the Glow Map using many different settings.

-I restarted from scratch with a brand new Nif file.

-I have set the Emissive color in Nif to white.

-I tried setting a Texture Map in GECK in case that was causing a problem for some reason.

 

I've been following the instructions from this website:

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/How_to_add_glow_maps

Are all of the settings correct? Should my image have Mip-Maps? Why does DX5 save with an Alpha layer and should it have one?

[neomonkeus]

The first problem I can see is that your pathing is incorrect. You have data/textures/../../ but if you at the images in the link you posted it should be relative to the textures folder. Also be careful with case sensitivity. texture is not the same as Textures.

 

The second issue is that you haven't included a diffuse and normal map with the download. I can only conclude that since they aren't included that you haven't any, as the download is only 25KB it would not have massive size increase to include them. That said you do have paths in the actual nif but until you solve the pathing issue I can't really tell. Anyways, having both are necessary for your nif to be render correctly.

 

As for removing the alpha layer I would not do that as it has a purpose, off hand I think is used for specular. The same goes for generating mip-maps. They are used for optimisation when viewing the object far away they will use an appropriate level of detail.

Edited August 6, 2013 by neomonkeus

[Deleted1205226User]

You could also have a look on how these glowing Metal Boxes are made : http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/19097/?

 

In my understanding, the glow effect is added with the Emissive parameter and the glow map will act as a mask for it, hiding the parts you don't want to glow.

 

If you're putting your model in game with Emissive set to white and no Glow map, How does it look ?

 

The tutorial you're referring says to save _g maps with DXT5 and no MipMap, but in game _g map are in DXT1 WITH MipMap ...