A Real Ghost Ship

[alonsomartinez]

I wanted to know how to create a Ghost ship that looks like the Undead Blades in the Sancre Tor mission.I want the ship to be see through and luminous green but still be able to be boarded. I want it the ship to look likr the ghost here

[pwnedbyscope]

make the textures transparent

[L33Nexus]

;) cool I've always wanted to know how to make the ghost type look Pwnedbyscope do you play Halo 3 that name really rings a bell :P

[zprospero]

The ghostliness of the dead blades comes from a special shader effect and setting the actor's alpha channel very low (makes it see-through)

which is included in a spell ability (like 'Stunted Magicka') so the spell only works for NPCs and creatures.

 

While you can write a script to apply the shader effect, I know of no way to set the alpha on architecture (though OBSE may have something, but I don't know).

 

You would have to make the ship an activator (which means you have to extract the .nif files and put them back in the CS as activators)

to apply a script that adds the shader, unfortunately the shader looks ridiculous without the invisibility.

 

I made a test with the dragon statue activator.

 

http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz84/zprospero/ghostEffect.jpg

 

If you did extract and edit the textures to make them be almost entirely invisible you could make it work.

 

So while it's infinitely harder than making an NPC ghostly, I believe it can be done.

[L33Nexus]

well Zprospero using step 1 and 2 of my Nmap tutorial could probably get the desired effect right?

[zprospero]

Well, maybe if you apply that to the texture...

 

Hmm. Well, since I have a test .esp set up already, I'll fool with the dragon texture and see if I can do it.

[L33Nexus]

:D I'd love to see the outcome that means my N map tutorial would be a 2 birds in one stone tutorial ;)

[zprospero]

Well, the texture editing didn't really work.

 

So, I started messing around in Nifskope, and while I did get an effect, and you may try this out, I also encountered some bugs.

 

By editing the niMaterialProperty's alpha to .25 (I tried it lower and you couldn't see it at all), and fooling around with the

specular/emissive/etc color, I got this effect. I had to remove the shader because it looks pretty much identical to how it

did in the last picture. So no help there.

 

http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz84/zprospero/001.jpg

 

You can see through it, but you can also see mesh faces, which is bad. This may not happen in

many case though a the dragon statue is a complex mesh, only trial and error could tell for sure.

 

However, this WILL happen in all cases and is a big bug.

If you look through it certain things lose their textures.

http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz84/zprospero/002.jpg

 

If you know a lot about Nifskope, and get lucky about the lighted internal faces,

then you may be able to pull this off. I would recommend looking at something

you know has an invisible part of the mesh, examine it's texture and it's properties

in Nifskope and see if it works how you want it to.

 

I'm afraid I can't get anything more than this.

[L33Nexus]

Well i'll see about something if i find a good way to do it without bugs then i'll tell you ;)

[zprospero]

I got something. There's a special property on anything that's appears to be glass in Nifskope. It's

called the 'NiAlphaProperty' which does the same thing SetActorAlpha does on NPCs on meshes.

 

So, I copied the property over from a .nif that had glass in it, then applied the 'paralyze' effect shader

to the statue. It actually flashes every now and again and you can see the texture briefly. It works pretty well.

With some mists and creative use of effects this could be very spooky.

 

http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz84/zprospero/GhostlyStatue.jpg

http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz84/zprospero/GhostlyStatue2.jpg

 

There's still the problem of internal faces, but it doesn't remove all the textures when you're

behind it like before. If you want more specifics, I could put up a little image tutorial, if you want.