How do I control the shine of a texture

[mcole254]

So I'd like to know how to keep my fabric parts from looking like plastic and my metal pieces to have a much shinier almost glossy look. Could someone help me out

[Pronam]

There is a setting in nifskope to do it, but I can't recall or find the nifs I used for some coins. to do that before But it really become more shiny and had a more silver-ish look when you used it more. There is a glossiness-setting at the NiMaterialProperty...maybe it's that one?

[thePhilanthropy]

just from the top of my head. I could be wrong (likely):

 

it depends on the material and on the normal map. With NiMaterialProperty you can control how shiny it is (but it will always look like plastic). The normal map ought to control it, I think. It should have an alpha channel that controls how shiny stuff is. Black is not shiny at all, white is the shiniest. But that also depends on how the normal map is compressed. It should be either DXT3, or DXT5. DXT5 is better, as far as I know, because it allows more colours (all greyscale), and therefore smoother transitions.

 

Try to experiment with both.

[LHammonds]

As the_philanthropy said, the shine-factor (light reflection) is controlled in the alpha channel of the normal map.

 

Another area to check is the material colors in NifSkope for each NiTriStrip / NiTriShape. The typical color setting is white, white, black, black. (Ambient, Diffuse, Specular, Emissive Color)

 

If you want to create a glossy effect, read this article: Reflective Metal

 

LHammonds

[Vagrant0]

Just thought that I should mention that if you're using Blender, the alpha channel of the normal map is treated as the opacity of the normal map. Meaning that once your normal map is done, you would need to make the texture mostly transparent in order to make it non-shiny. Or atleast that's my understanding of the issue.

[LHammonds]

Just thought that I should mention that if you're using Blender, the alpha channel of the normal map is treated as the opacity of the normal map. Meaning that once your normal map is done, you would need to make the texture mostly transparent in order to make it non-shiny. Or atleast that's my understanding of the issue.

Yes, it is tricky. In GIMP, you will see the texture as somewhat transparent depending on how you modified the alpha channel. It is very confusing indeed. I save that part for the very last thing I do before export to DDS.

 

The best tool I've used for editing alpha channels is Adobe Photoshop...hands down. As a matter of fact, that is the ONLY reason I use photoshop. I do everything else with PaintShopPro, GIMP or Paint.NET

 

LHammonds