NIFSkope Trouble

[Heffy]

That depends, but generally no. Slot 3 is used for assigning glowing areas or skintones (usually not something you’ll use for a helmet, since the head isn’t included with these meshes). Not sure what slot 4 is for, I’ve never seen it being used. Slots 5 & 6 are usually used with weapon meshes (which doesn’t mean you can’t use them on armors, I guess, depends on what effects you want to achieve). Actually most armors use only slots 1 and 2 (thus just a texture and a normal map with a specular mask as an alpha channel).

You can also compare your settings with the vanilla meshes similar to your model.

[YesRoyalty]

Something still feels off. I've applied the specular map and the like to the model, but there's no discernable change in-game. I'm still not entirely sure what's up.

To provide what is probably much-needed background, what I'm trying to bring into the game is a virtual replica of a real motorcycle helmet with a mirrored visor. Presently, the effect which is eluding me is the reflective nature of the visor (and, to a lesser degree, the rest of the helmet) - I need it not just to reflect light, but reflect the image of the environment (I know it can be done because the effect is present on the 1st-person Varmint Rifle scope lens).

The helmet:

 

 

 

I don't know why, but it seems as though the bump and specular maps are behaving differently on my helmet than they are with the vanilla objects. Essentially, it seems to be taking an either-or approach; rather than darker areas in the spec map being less reflective in the game, anything above the neutral grey is reflective and everything below it is what I suppose could be called inverse-reflective - the less light is hitting it, the more it shines. It's awfully bizarre.

[Heffy]

The Varmint Rifle scope lens doesn’t actually reflect the environment, it just fakes it by reflecting a texture and being very shiny. To do that, you need to check SF_Multiple_Textures in Shader Flags for the visor’s BSShaderPPLightingProperty. Although it’s optional, I’d advise you to make a different material for the visor.

The spec map for the visor needs to be something near the mid-dark grey (it doesn’t need to be a uniform color). Here’s how the varmint rifle’s spec looks like:

 

 

 

Although the varmint scope effect could look ok, I think the radiation suit’s visor settings would be more suitable for what you’re trying to achieve. It’s basically the same method, only the materials used are different, so you can try both. Here’s for the radsuit:

 

First for the NiMaterialProperty:

 

 

Now, for the BSShaderPPLightingProperty:

 

 

And, finally, for the BSShaderTextureSet:

 

 

For your other problem, did you save the normal map as a DXT5 dds file (else, it discards the alpha channel) with the spec map as its alpha channel? Not sure that's it, but I get sometimes weird looking results when the alpha channel isn't correctly exported...

Edited November 6, 2011 by Heffy

[YesRoyalty]

We have a winner! It's in the game and it looks excellent! Thanks so much for all your help! I know who to shoot a message to if I hit another snag.

This helmet will be a part of a good-sized add-on to the game that I'm hoping to release in September of next year; I'll make sure to give you credit for helping me get started.