Help: Hair Meshes and Lighting

[sirtrippsalot]

Alright, so I've spent a good dozen hours adjusting this and that in the nif and textures, and even attempted to find something in the mesh itself.

I'm having a bit of an issue and finally need to ask random strangers for help ^_^.

 

I've been working on a hair compilation for some time now, and all had been well. Recently I imported several hairstyles from Oblivion and got them adjusted and added, and all seemed good until people started using it and going under bright lighting. The problem with all the newly added styles is that when under a bright light, the hugely reflect the light to the point that the whole top of the head looks almost white, and as well the shadows on the hair are very stark. I've tried playing with material settings in the nif, and adjusting the textures, but no matter what I seem to try the issue persists. I've included a picture of the issue here. If anyone can point me in the right direction how to resolve this, the help would be much appreciated.

 

http://y-design.promagnumcorp.com/Untitled-1.png

[throttlekitty]

Neat trick :D

hmm, is the hair in the pic supposed to be blueish purple, or is a normal map applied as the base texture? Actually, are all three textures defined in the .nif properly?

 

It could be a tangent space issue. In NifSkope, check the TriShapeData, and check that 'BS Num UV Sets' is set to 16 or 4097 (it's a bit mislabeled at the moment). Tangents and Binormals rely on this flag to be present, then the update tangent space spell can be run.

[sirtrippsalot]

Yes, the hair should be bluish purple :P It's the colour I chose ^_^ and the three textures are all defined correctly. However I've never heard of the last bit so I'm checking that out now, thanks throttlekitty ^_^

 

Alrighty, played with that, and the num uv sets flag just made the hair creepy and translucent ^_^

HOWEVER, I did fix it and you did help ^_^

All they seem to require is for me to go through every single nif and update the tangent spaces ^_^

Though I really don't understand what that does, it works :D

[throttlekitty]

Glad it worked for you.

 

Tangent space is necessary for any kind of DOT3 shader (pretty much any shader that involves a normal map), and lack of it can cause odd issues. I've seen some modded items get by fine without it, but I suspect that the engine may be calculating TS at runtime, which is kind of bad.