Normal Mapping Question

[GhostFangTaken]

This is the story: I was just messin with some old meshes that I had in my oblivion/data folder and I came across LordMaddogs Master chief armor from his great Fantasy mod (the first ever mod I downloaded) and the energy sword..... looked plastic to me so i wanted to add a glow map. So i read on the CS Wiki and followed directions and it said colorless/greyscale pic, so I took the texture file, converted to jpg greyscaled it, converted back to dds, labled it texture_g.dds as it said. It didnt even show up when I put it in the CS.

 

So my question(s) is did I do it right?

Does it take the place of the texture_n.dds file?

Do i need and special preperation?

 

Solve one of my many modder's block problems please. :wallbash:

[LHammonds]

Ah, simple problem to fix. Just adding a _g.dds file is not enough. You need to tell the NIF file to "emit" light and what color of light. This is controlled through the "NiMaterialProperty" and you change the "Specular Color" from solid black (#000000) to your desired color. Or you can set the color to white (#ffffff) and let the texture color determine what color is emitted.

 

If you had a sword with separate materials for the hilt and blade, you could make the entire blade glow a specific color and intensity by adjusting the Specular Color without the need for having a _g.dds file. But if you want certain parts of the mesh to emit light such as Elvish letters, a glowmap texture is perfect for doing this.

 

LHammonds