How should i add glow, flicker and shine effects to my custom mesh in Fallout 4 ?

[steviex34]

Please help a beginner. Thank you very much.

[ChuckYufarley]

There are several ways to do each of those things. Without going into a lot of detail, my first suggestion would be to learn how to use Nifskope, then find vanilla assets that do the things you're looking for and do a little reverse engineering. 

Glowing is typically handled by the type of material used. Glow maps can be used in a BGSM material. They work well for simple objects, but do not give off a bloom effect. Additive BGEM materials work similarly to glow maps, but with an added bloom effect.  If I'm making a button or switch or simple little indicator light on a control panel, I'll use a glow map. If I'm making a neon light or light fixture, I'll use the additive BGEM.

Flickering is done with texture animations. Very briefly, an animated texture has any number of shader property float controllers assigned to the material, and are then manipulated within a controller sequence via float interpolators and float data to achieve the desired effects. Off the top of my head, the one good example I can think of for a flicker effect (if you have the Far Harbor DLC) is the drive-in theater projector beam. 

Shine can be affected by a specular texture as well as a environment map texture. The specular texture determines how much light will reflect off an object. Environment maps (cube maps) work well for giving an object a metallic shine. There are several different cube maps to choose from here: Data\Textures\Shared\Cubemaps. 

Again, the best way to learn this stuff is to reverse engineer using Nifskope.  

[steviex34]

1 hour ago, ChuckYufarley said:

Flickering is done with texture animations. Very briefly, an animated texture has any number of shader property float controllers assigned to the material, and are then manipulated within a controller sequence via float interpolators and float data to achieve the desired effects.

Thank you. For example, in this sign of diamond city, there is a glow, but no flicker effect. So how should i make this sign flicker naturally ? is there a step by step process to achieve this effect ?

[ChuckYufarley]

First of all, I do not know of any step by step tutorials that would cover this exact scenario. Second, and I cannot stress this enough, the best way to figure this kind of thing out is by looking at vanilla nif files in Nifskope. For the flicker effect, I suggested looking at the projector beam from the Far Harbor drive-in. You can find that here: Data\Meshes\DLC03\Effects\DLC03ProjectorLightBeam.nif

It is a very simple nif. The only mesh is the projector beam. It only has one shader property float controller assigned to the material. This particular texture animation does not even use a controller sequence. The animation is set up to play continuously.  Try copying the controller, interpolator and data assigned to the projector beam material to the detective sign material.