SSE Achieving the "Darksaber" effect on glow textures

[Assathoth]

Is it possible to apply this effect(attachment below) to textures like lightning magic or the laser bolts in fallout 4? Everytime i try to apply the effect myself, the black part always ends up invisible. I figure it has something to do with Alpha settings but i haven't been able to find out what it is exactly.

[Sphered]

Dont see why not, though this particular visual outcome is likely to be more dependent on mesh settings over texture being used . Ive made trippy void-black fire before, and one interesting way was to use negative alpha settings, though that wasnt the way I settled on. If familar with nifskope you might try playing with some values there, but be aware you cant rely on what skope shows you, as these types of effects wont look the same in-game as if does when viewing it there

[maxarturo]

Yes it can be done, but how is done depends on what and where exactly you want this to be applied.

If you want this to be applied on a sword for example, then you need to:

1) Create a black diffuse texture for the base blade.

2) For the surrounding white glow you need to create in the sword model (nif) the mesh around it that will hold the: Either your glow map or the empty (without glow map) emmisive value.

* This surrounding mesh is something like the 'Movable Statics' fog, mist, smoke that are in CK, it actually does the exact same thing here, it simulates the 'light glow' effect around the blade.

3) To achieve this gradient that goes from total black to the emissive white you need to apply 'black vertex colors' where it needs in the mesh that surrounds the sword/blade object, and the rest to be handle by the gradient that will apply the emmisive value.

If you want this to be applied in a 'Hand Equip Magic Art Object' and in a spell's projectile (like in your first picture), then here you mainly work with 'Vertex Colors', gradient textures and settings of the 'hand equip art object' and spell's projectile's nif in NifSkope.

But writting how exactly is done is a little bit tricky on a written post, since there are a lot of properties values you need to assign in the magic art nif object, like 'controllers', the appropriate flags, emmisive values, animation keys, how 'NiBillboardsNodes' and 'NiParticleSystems' are set up, and a bounch of other things.

It would be easier for you to understand this If you have SLE, then you can take a look at one of my mods and see how the spell 'Legion's Void' was created, and especially its projectile which has exactly what you are aiming to achieve.

After studying this, you will be in a more comfortable position to know how to create what you have in mind.

* Such thing as a 'negative alpha channel' does not exists here.

An alpha channel of a texture is a grayscale image of the same size as the layer representing its transparency. For each pixel the gray level (a value between 0 and 255) represents the pixels's Alpha value. An alpha channel can make areas of the layer to appear partially transparent or fully transparent depending also with the nif's settings in NifSkope.

Edited October 5, 2022 by maxarturo