Graphics Modding

[ishmaeltheforsaken]

Whew. Looks like I finally got it working in-game... looks pretty bad though. I think it could make a nice effect, but it won't seem to light up (like, it looks as though there's barely any light shining on it, even outside in broad daylight). I applied it to the glass sword, but it looks really dark and oily.

 

Probs demands more experimentation; but I think I'll let someone else do the work ;P

 

Thanks for the help, guise :3

[ishmaeltheforsaken]

Okay, I have another question.

 

With the alpha property, if blending is enabled, the transparency is through the entire mesh, not just the poly on which there is transparency. If the mesh has two layers, and the top layer is black in the alpha channel (transparent) and the bottom layer is white (opaque), looking through the top layer also looks through the bottom.

 

Is there any way to fix this?

[throttlekitty]

That's triangle sorting, and has to do with the construction of the model. Triangles are rendered sequentially based off the vertex/triangle index, then transparent blending happens. If an outer layer is drawn before the inner, there's technically nothing to blend against. I hope that makes sense.

 

Short answer for fixing it is to treat your inner/outer layers as separate objects in a 3d app. Select them in order from inside to outside, then combine them into a single model. (Last I heard, blender's selection order needs to be reversed)

If it's not possible to use a single object, order the TriShapes in Nifskope to mimic this behavior. Ctrl-Up or Ctrl-Down to move a block number in the hierarchy. The game should render the shapes in order properly.

[Werne]

It seems I have a problem with the new nif.xml. Whenever I save a FO3 model in nifskope with the new .xml it gives me the following error:

 

 

It still saves it but that error message is annoying.

[throttlekitty]

Yes, yes it is annoying. Should have a fix soon.

 

In other News, Cold Blood has been working on the Maya nif Translator, it has animation support! Currently for 2012 only.

 

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3303

 

edit: No Skyrim support, but he thinks he might get to that soon.

Edited January 7, 2012 by throttlekitty

[Ghogiel]

TK: Tell me you can get glow maps to work right. (the glow works fine but the map no worky)

 

there has been a spout of people asking me if I knew how to get them to work, I was like just look at a vanilla nif or try this or that etc. I finally broke down to try to replicate one of these persons issue and you know what, I got zip on my first set of experiments. I tried just the standard whack some emissive up and add glow map in correct slot. nothing, fiddled with shader settings, all the way to the point of just pasting an existng shader block from a nif that used a glow map, one of the staff nifs, into my test nif, which was an iron dagger. checked vertex colors and all that..still nothing

 

if you want a bit of a mystery take a look into it :biggrin:

Edited January 11, 2012 by Ghogiel

[jgreybear]

I added this in the other thread to might double check it though.

 

 

It is very important to set these things.

 

 

Shader Type - Value Should be set to (2) this has to be set to 2 for it to work.

 

Shader Flags 1 -leave olone unless needed for other things

Shader Flags 2 - Need to set Value to have |SF_Glow_Map| checked

 

Emmissive Color - Set to anything But Black.. i suggest a Dark to light Grey, if you want the Texture color to glow. otherwise it will glow the color you set. just play around with it.

 

Emmissive Saturation - I have mine set at 5.0..play with it it allows how much color comes through.. at least thats what i think.

[Ghogiel]

Yeah I just got that figured out, shader type 2 was it.

[throttlekitty]

TK: Tell me you can get glow maps to work right. (the glow works fine but the map no worky)

I can get glow maps to work. :D

 

jgreybear nailed it. And yea, that saturation bit kind of threw me off. My first tests were fine until I went outside, and the color got washed out.

 

Also, the transparency doesn't quiiite work the same. Rather than 0,1 it's more like 0,10 (or 5, i dunno where the actual cap is), values over 1 start adding more opacity to the alpha channel, there's a number of assets that do this.

[Ghogiel]

what is weird.. some vanilla assets with glow maps are seemingly set up wrong. I think if I really look at them now with the eye for the self illum... I think their glow maps are probably doing bugger all :confused:

the staff weapons for one, their shader block didn't work for jack in my first test.