Weapon modeling help

[pegasus1820]

Hi all,

 

I’m new to 3d modeling with 3ds max (I do have Exp. With cinema 4d however) and I’m having a little problem with porting the weapon into oblivion. I can get the item in the game however I cannot seem to get it to be “shiny” like I can in 3ds max. This is it in 3ds max:

 

 

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/6628/katanav2lr4.png

 

 

And this is it in Oblivion.

 

http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/d3bc3845104aa5f421415e6c683f2d14d83a88e7.png

 

As you can see the textures look really dull. Did I miss a step? I read a tutorial about nifscope on the ESCS wiki however it made no sense to me. Can some one link a tutorial or offer so help?

[SickleYield]

Firstly, nothing is ever going to look the same in Blender or Max as it does in Oblivion. This is why NifSkope alchemy is important. There are two fairly easy ways to do what you want to do:

 

1.

 

The quickest and easiest way to make your weapon shinier is via the normal map. You must have some sort of normal map or it wouldn't be visible in game. I'm not sure whether you use Photoshop or GIMP so I'm not sure how much help this will be, but your maps need to be 1. A little deeper and 2. Much more opaque to get the shinier look. I often use the Sobel 3x3 setting for that, or you can use the plain old 4 sample and just make sure you do not set the alpha channel to height.

 

The rule of thumb is that if you look at your normal map and can see through it, it's not going to be very shiny.

 

 

 

2.

 

You can make things shinier in NifSkope by messing with the material settings. Here is where those are in a given nitrishape:

 

http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s197/sickleyield/emissive.jpg

 

If you set that bottom line ("emissive color") to white, the mesh will be very bright and glowing; if black, it will not glow at all. If you click any one of those lines it will turn into a bunch of numbers that stand for the amount of red, green or blue in the material. I usually have mine at 1 or 0 so it doesn't mess with the look of the texture too much.

 

Under the arrow is another line that says "glossiness." That is normally set to 12.5. The higher you set it, the shinier your mesh will be. It's very easy to overdo this, but if you really want chrome, that's how to get it.

 

It's also possible to get super shininess with nitexturingproperty settings, but it's not necessary - you can get something shiny with much more control just by altering the glossiness.

[pegasus1820]

Hi m8, Ill give the nifscope a try nd see if that helps me with my problum. As I seid before im really new to 3d modeling for oblvion and with 3ds max so thank you for your help :thumbsup:

 

ty

PeG