Skin Shaders

[futamagus]

So I'm trying to make a mod/model swap, changing around characters models.

 

I'm finally done - everything is modeled, textured, spec maps, shiny AWESOME - everything is working in game.

 

I have one final not pick on my mod, and that is what I added to the character has a blah, bland shader. It more or less is using the default (Blinn/Phong/Whatever) Shader and it doesn't match the characters skin shade at all. The Skin Shader looks great, it responds to light much better and has a great back/rim light.

 

Whenever I change my models material name to Skin (This is probably a "Duh" for most of you vets out there) It completely defaults my model to the Characters Skin Shader, and overrides any of my Texture Settings. So is there anyway in NifSkope to edit Dupe the Skin Shader? Is there any way to duplicate the skin shader's property/settings, and apply it to MY model's shader? Any help is appreciated

[thePhilanthropy]

i understand the problem. As it turns out the Oblivion engine handles some materials and meshes in a way that makes the life of a modder so much harder. E.g. body meshes. The texture path is somewhat irrelevant, as long as the niTriShape/Strips has the right name or material.

 

Consider the different head meshes. They don't use the skin material (I think), but appear much the same. Try this:

- extract (with OBMM) and open (with nifskope) headhuman.nif

- copy the material from the niTriShape to your mesh.

 

if that still doesn't work, try to find a list of all the Oblivion shaders (google it). Try them out.

If that doesn't help, try to change the way you apprach the issue.

 

actually I don't think that's gonna work as intended, but it's definitely worth a shot.

 

also, it would be great if you could elaborate on what exactly you're trying to do:

what are "characters models"`? Do you mean the the body meshes? and you want them to use different textures?

or what?

be more (very) specific.

[futamagus]

i understand the problem. As it turns out the Oblivion engine handles some materials and meshes in a way that makes the life of a modder so much harder. E.g. body meshes. The texture path is somewhat irrelevant, as long as the niTriShape/Strips has the right name or material.

 

Consider the different head meshes. They don't use the skin material (I think), but appear much the same. Try this:

- extract (with OBMM) and open (with nifskope) headhuman.nif

- copy the material from the niTriShape to your mesh.

 

if that still doesn't work, try to find a list of all the Oblivion shaders (google it). Try them out.

If that doesn't help, try to change the way you apprach the issue.

 

actually I don't think that's gonna work as intended, but it's definitely worth a shot.

 

also, it would be great if you could elaborate on what exactly you're trying to do:

what are "characters models"`? Do you mean the the body meshes? and you want them to use different textures?

or what?

be more (very) specific.

 

 

Little embarrassed to admit it -but yeah for the sake of communication so you fully understand my issue, I'm making a more up to date futa mod that works with a Japanese mod called Fuanalivion. Basically what it does is makes a new race called TransHuman and there's an amended version of the femalelowerbody.nif that attaches a penis to the lower torso. I thought to original looked pretty bad ... so I modeled and textured my own up. I attached or added the "Penis Block" to the nif file, The rest of the character has the skin shader, but the penis is the default blinn/phong glossy mess and just doesn't look 100% polished. I may be making a porno mod ... but dammit you have to have standards.

[JDGameArt]

I was kinda messing with the same thing not too long ago. If you want to you can go in and edit the shaders for the entire game engine their are even tools to help with that. If you're not looking to do that, and focousing on just you're textures for the specific model their are a few ways around that too.

 

You can load, or name a material any thing under the sun, but some names have pre-set settings attached to the name, like EnvMap2, or skin. When you use a name that the game recognises it's going to use the default settings. For example EnvMap2 uses a reflective map under Textures\effects\windowenvironmentmap01.dds. Changing this file would change the reflective look with any material named EnvMap2.

 

Have you tried working with the Ambient, diffuse, specular, and gloss settings yet? Even if you have the matreial named "skin" you can change these settings which will have a direct effect on how bright, or dark a texture will look, from a sunlight setting to a very dark area. These settings work with colors in both the grey scale spectrum, as well with all of the RGB colors. Unless I didnt understand the question I'd start here.

 

2c

 

http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/1566738-1275684788.jpg

[futamagus]

Yeah - I'm looking at alot of the game files right now trying to see if there is another material out there that has the use of the "Rim Light" or backlit, most of the materials don't do that ... I'll look in game at the character selection screen to see if any custom characters to - it's a very soft good looking shader.

 

If you can direct me to an application that does help you change the shaders around, that would be awesome and good to look at and fiddle with - the link I found is currently broken.

[futamagus]

Doh - :C

 

I think what would solve the problem is if I made a duplicate of the skin shader and named it "Skin2" - but I have no Idea how to unpack on of the shader packages >_< I am failing hard at google :-\

[thePhilanthropy]

there's no need to mess with the shaders themselves.

 

So your new mesh is using the same texture as the lower body mesh. And you can't really change that if you want to use the skin shader.

That's not such a big deal really. All you need to do is have your new mesh occupy part of the UV-map that is not occupied by the lower body. And then you retexture the texture for the lower body accordingly.

This, of course means that you need to know how to edit UV-maps. But that's easier and less incompatibility-prone as changing shaders (with no clear goal in sight, anyway).

[futamagus]

there's no need to mess with the shaders themselves.

 

So your new mesh is using the same texture as the lower body mesh. And you can't really change that if you want to use the skin shader.

That's not such a big deal really. All you need to do is have your new mesh occupy part of the UV-map that is not occupied by the lower body. And then you retexture the texture for the lower body accordingly.

This, of course means that you need to know how to edit UV-maps. But that's easier and less incompatibility-prone as changing shaders (with no clear goal in sight, anyway).

 

Just tried that out -Scaled down my original texture down, and added it to the FootFemale texture -same with the normal maps, there was more than enough free real estate for me to add my texture in there. Told the model to use that texture and use the Skin Shader ... still nothing ... I have a bad feeling I need to replace some "master" texture somewhere for it to find my new texture >:-\

[futamagus]

Got it - got it got it! - now I just need to figure out how to get spec to work again .... The shader ate my spec maps ...