Mod Question concerning texture shine

[tuggy]

Hello modders, I have a quick question that I'm hoping someone might be able to address. I have a shine problem on one of my meshes. It's a creature pelt, so it is not supposed to shine, yet when I view it in the light it's nearly white with shine. Is there a way to tone this down? I've tried adjusting the glossiness in nifskope. I've also tried deleting the alpha channel in photoshop. (Is it supposed to have one in order to determine if it is shiney or not? If so is the alpha white or black?) Is there a surefire procedure to go through to make sure something (clothes, animals etc) does not have that bright shine? Thanks in advance for any help offered. (:

[Vagrant0]

Hello modders, I have a quick question that I'm hoping someone might be able to address. I have a shine problem on one of my meshes. It's a creature pelt, so it is not supposed to shine, yet when I view it in the light it's nearly white with shine. Is there a way to tone this down? I've tried adjusting the glossiness in nifskope. I've also tried deleting the alpha channel in photoshop. (Is it supposed to have one in order to determine if it is shiney or not? If so is the alpha white or black?) Is there a surefire procedure to go through to make sure something (clothes, animals etc) does not have that bright shine? Thanks in advance for any help offered. (:

It's the alpha channel of the normal map which causes the shine. It should be black or nearly black for most applications, but can have some lighter areas to help enhance the appearance of the texture. Although making this completely black will work fine, use of this channel can be used to make the ingame texture look better under the right light.

 

One way to make a decent image to use for the shininess is to take the actual texture, paste it into the alpha channel of the normal map (this turns it grayscale), and then change the brightness down to where the darkest parts are entirely black, while keeping the brightest parts a medium-dark shade of gray. You can then tweak contrast and brightness again to either make those bright parts stand out more, or dull them (brightening the rest slightly). The final texture should still be fairly dark (much darker than the background of this message).

 

There are other ways, but most of those require a fair amount of artistic skill and a good deal of planning (adding shine to areas that don't normally have it as a means of creating depth and variation). The above method is also applicable to most applications.