RuneDasRune Posted May 31, 2015 Share Posted May 31, 2015 Hello everyone I am very to new to Skyrim/Bethseda modding, and I have been having some concerns and problems making textures for Skyrim. preface: I am new to Skyrim modding but I have some years experience in modding for racing sims golf games. I am familiar how textures work in general and understand the following: diffuse, normal (bump mapping back in my day), specular, occlusion, alpha channel, dtx compression and so on. The question: Do I have to sacrifice normal map detail and quality just to make a texture that doesnt shine like crazy? The only way i can stop my objects from shining is to increase transparency on the normal so much that I lose almost all detail. Is there any way to make a seperate specular map so that I do not have to use the alpha from my normal as a specular map? Is there something im doing wrong? The best solution I've had is to use nifscope to drop specular power and glossiness way down, but I'm still not getting satisfactory results. I am also getting creation kit warning about hdr on ps3 will have problems is specular is set at 0 (even though i had it set at .1 perhaps it uses only whole numbers?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nerdofprey Posted May 31, 2015 Share Posted May 31, 2015 Don't mess with the transparency on your normal maps; it's definitely a Nifskope issue. Where you want to be trying stuff is not the glossiness or specular settings but the shader flags. Maybe you made model space normals but didn't tick the model space normals flag? It is definitely possible to add specular maps to control which parts of your mesh are shiny, but may not be necessary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gezegond Posted May 31, 2015 Share Posted May 31, 2015 Hi. Open your image in gimp, use the brightness tool and turn the brightness halfway down. Then create your normalmap from the resulting image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattiewagg Posted May 31, 2015 Share Posted May 31, 2015 The normal map is the alpha channel of your specular map. You can change the specular map independent of the alpha channel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RuneDasRune Posted May 31, 2015 Author Share Posted May 31, 2015 On 5/31/2015 at 2:45 AM, nerdofprey said: Don't mess with the transparency on your normal maps; it's definitely a Nifskope issue. Where you want to be trying stuff is not the glossiness or specular settings but the shader flags. Maybe you made model space normals but didn't tick the model space normals flag? It is definitely possible to add specular maps to control which parts of your mesh are shiny, but may not be necessary.I've looked under shader flags 1 and shader flags 2, but I can not find any flags for normals. To be specifc im changing the texture on the vanilla archery target, and I've tried using the nifscope setting from the original, but it is waaaay too shiny. I've never experienced anything like this before. I'm going to try to uninstall and reinstall gimp 2.8 because it has been crashing alot on export. This may all just be some glitch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RuneDasRune Posted May 31, 2015 Author Share Posted May 31, 2015 On 5/31/2015 at 3:13 AM, Matthiaswagg said: The normal map is the alpha channel of your specular map. You can change the specular map independent of the alpha channel.Are you sure I'ts not the other way around? I'm getting very confused. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RuneDasRune Posted May 31, 2015 Author Share Posted May 31, 2015 On 5/31/2015 at 2:52 AM, gezegond said: Hi. Open your image in gimp, use the brightness tool and turn the brightness halfway down. Then create your normalmap from the resulting image.This seems like a very practical solution, I will give this a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pfuscher Posted May 31, 2015 Share Posted May 31, 2015 there is no transparency for the normal map. Instead bethesda used the alpha map section for the specular map. THIS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattiewagg Posted May 31, 2015 Share Posted May 31, 2015 On 5/31/2015 at 4:26 AM, RuneDasRune said: On 5/31/2015 at 3:13 AM, Matthiaswagg said: The normal map is the alpha channel of your specular map. You can change the specular map independent of the alpha channel.Are you sure I'ts not the other way around? I'm getting very confused. I'm an idiot. Yes, it's the other way around. However, you can change them independent of each other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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