SSE Trouble with Landscape Normal Maps and Lights.

[MurderClan]

Hey guys,

 

so I'm shifting a big worldspace mod over to SE and I'm having problems with landscape texture normals. If I put a bulb at ground height (like for a campfire) the light only goes out from it in one direction.

This wasn't an issue in LE, although I did have issues with directional lighting on some models. It's really pronounced in SE. I suspect it's just less forgiving.

 

I must have missed something when I started making normal maps, because I don't know how to make them to work when they're on the ground with light from above. The vanilla textures work fine. If anyone could give me any pointers or point me to a tuto or anything I'd appreciate it.

 

Pic: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/images/156553

[maxarturo]

From the pic it looks like the light used is a 'Shadow Hemisphere', and you only see the non shadow part of the light because Skyrim engine does not support shadow light casting on exterior cells, you can only use non shadow.

As for normal maps, they don't affect how the lights gets casted by the light, so as long as your normal map has its 'Alpha' channel and its mipmaps, they will receive and react to the light from whatever direction it's coming.

*Also keep in mind the light mesh's restriction on the amount of lights that can be use casting in 1 mesh (4 lights), this also applies foe exterior cells which are actually individual terrain meshes. But even with 4 lights you can expirience issues like this one or flickering of the mesh.

Edited July 8, 2022 by maxarturo

[MurderClan]

 

From the pic it looks like the light used is a 'Shadow Hemisphere', and you only see the non shadow part of the light because Skyrim engine does not support shadow light casting on exterior cells, you can only use non shadow.

As for normal maps, they don't affect how the lights gets casted by the light, so as long as your normal map has its 'Alpha' channel and its mipmaps, they will receive and react to the light from whatever direction it's coming.

*Also keep in mind the light mesh's restriction on the amount of lights that can be use casting in 1 mesh (4 lights), this also applies foe exterior cells which are actually individual terrain meshes. But even with 4 lights you can expirience issues like this one or flickering of the mesh.

 

 

Thanks, mate. Aye, it's an NS bulb. As it happens, I lucked out and got it fixed by changing the DDS plugin I was using with photoshop for the normal map.

 

For anyone else, just don't use the Intel plugin for the normals. Use the old simple generic one.