Help making that Latex shine effect

[dread74]

Hi there,

 

I am new to 3d modding but have plenty of experience playing with gimp, textures, layers etc...

 

What I would 'like' to do it create / edit a few simple outfits and give them that nice shiny black latex effect.

I have tried to research this myself as well as seeking help on the loverslab forum and thus far the advise I have been give has been to use nifskope (which I already had from my resarch) to change the glossiness etc...

 

I am using a simple mod from this forum - sorry I forget which now as I've been playing / banging my head against desk now... for a few weeks ! :(

Anyway... a simple wetsuit mod... which I have been playing with the nif file trying and changing pretty much every setting I can see with in most cases no effect whats so ever in game - apart from making the texture completely invisible on occasion!

 

The nif screen grabs the person (who mods for skyrim not fallout) who was trying to help me did seem to lack a few entries that seem to be present in all the nif files for fallout that I have seen - and I have downloaded and looked at pretty much every latex mod I could find...

The Wet Material entry and wetness options... but again I have duplicated these settings from other latex mods and still my wetsuit mod has no latex shine.

I also notice the glossines is normally set to 1 in fallout nif files for latex mods... !?!?

 

Help - someone - please - where am I going wrong ??

 

Thank you in advance.

[thumbincubation]

Hi Dread,

 

I don't know about changing mesh gloss, but you can change the normal map, whole or in part, to get a more or less glossy look. Rather than type it all again, this thread has the general procedure I use. You'll need GIMP with both the .dds and the normal map plugins, all free.

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5445322-normal-map-woes/

 

*Mind you, this is meant for Skyrim SE, but I believe it's similar for Fallout.

[montky]

@dreadSevenFour-er

indeed, thumbincubation's suggestions are awesome,

(as are some ideas they explore with texture maps and all

GIMP Script-Fu or Python-Pro automating code indeed, dang that's neat! )

and that can open up a whole new world of texture effects and such.

 

blahblahdeeblahblah, damanding etc, they've got some great tutes out there.

 

one word of trepidation though;

we have to be careful how the pathing is handled, and hence nifskope etc is probably required,

metadata pathing and whatnot.

to help avoid some of the 'texture weirdness' that happens,

such as what blahblahDeeblahblah outlines...

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5446792-custom-skinned-npcs-fade-out-when-on-fire-why/page-2

the jury is still out as to what specifically causes that invisible ghosting etc.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

tilarta had a neat synopsis and summary of different kinds of effects,

and a summary of RGB and other keying values.

a couple of folks on ThisWeekInTech also had ideas about the different texturing pipelines

for different games, including FO4.

 

it depends on how your texture material palette is set up,

and if you're embossing/bumping the 'pearlescent/oil-film" layer above the underlying 'plastic-y' layer.

don't forget to layer merge when you're combining those and ensuring it merges in the correct order hehe.

 

but wait, there's more;

then, you have patterns you can generate too -

demoivre, escher, leibniz, riemann, ishihara, mandelbrot...

you can achieve some really cool stuff that innately changes color per viewing angle,

or which is 'lenticular' too.

great for transparent glass surfaces to create the diffractive 'prism rainbow effect' or multi-colored shadows...

or, that plastic-y "Latex" sheen you're looking for.

 

several modders are working on

mapping a nurbs-face-group to play decals or .gif/.swf/.anim/.mov etc on the surface as an animation;

this is also a 2D-3D holographic approach for some other kinds of animation mapped to

various polychora... say, to a cylinder which undulates to a 3Sphere and back, all kinds of stuff.

we're working on 'seamless animation transition animations',

based on Juan's awesome works on some YT fractal zooms, though that's another story hehe.

 

eg:

say, you want an oil-like/mercury-like liquid metal door?

yet, when you shine a light through it, it will diffract in an opaque pearlescent/lenticular way...

(or weirder with the "UV Blacklight/Neon Pipboy torch" mod...)

all that is, is an animation in high-res from the 'texture on" state,

to "set opacity to 0%" and make the doorway no-clippable...

voila - it's solid when you look at it, until you click the 'open door' button,

then it 'melts' away...

Solid Texture -> Animation -> transparent/no texture -> Reverse Animation -> Solid Texture.

 

or, say you want to make a tesla-coil style 'force-field'...

all that is, is a rectangular prism or decal-surface between some meshes, with toggleable collision,

with an animation on the surface keyed to when collisions happen or object-classes interact with it...

 

 

 

I hope some of this was of use in achieving that shiny-reflection-y look,

and you'll have to let us know how you get on,

as that will likely be an awesome reskin/retexture mod to see.

[Perraine]

Unlike Skyrim meshes, with Fallout 4 objects the Normal Map Texture (xxxxx_n.dds) Alpha Channel is no longer used for gloss effects.

 

Part of what you are wanting to create is done with the "xxxxx_s.dds" file = the Specular Map. This file uses two (2) channels, Red and Green, to determine the Reflectivity and Glossiness of the texture.

The Red channel intensity (0<->128<->255) will change the "metalness" of the texture (or reflectivity) and the Green channel intensity (0<->128<->255) will change the "glossiness" or the amount of "shine" that is shown.

 

The other part is done with the Material File ( xxxxxx.bgsm )

 

You can change the colour of the light reflected in the Material File ( "xxxxxx.bgsm" ) and also change it's intensity as well.

 

Finally you can specify in the .nif file shader properties, and then consequently mirrored in the .bgsm file, for the item to use an "Environment Map". This file is essentially a "fake" reflection that will be overlayed onto the texture. Larger and brighter "Cube Maps" (as they are known) will cause shinier or brighter looking texture effects.

 

The material file is incredibly powerful for creating a wide variety of texture effects.

[dread74]

Firstly thank you for the awesome flood of replies. :smile:

 

I will have a play and let you know how I get on...

 

Edit: Brain hurts.... :(

Edited April 27, 2017 by dread74

[dread74]

Edit2:

Ok, trying to keep it simple at this stage... but using your advise... as best I understand it..

 

I have looked at other latex mods and they seem to have the _s file as just a yellow block which is ALL red and green.

and the _n file empty/invisible.

I have replicated this and darkened the _d texture file and hey presto excellent immediate results.

 

However... :smile: ... rather than a smooth finish it seems to have a visibly square pixilated look which I cant seem to establish the source of.

Again lookin at other latex mods the material file is identical, and there are no entries in the textures section in the nif file...

Ummm.... !???

Any ideas ?

Edited April 27, 2017 by dread74

[Perraine]

Fallout 4 doesn't use the paths specified in the "textures" section in the .nif file. It will ONLY use the files in the .bgsm file.

 

You can try setting the "Alpha" or Transparency of the _n.dds file to +100 (i.e. no transparency/alpha) to see if that is what is causing your pixelation.

 

Also the _s.dds file shouldn't really be a flat bright yellow. Although that will give you a "shiny" look, realistically it should have some texturing or some variation in the colour intensity. Try adding some red and green layer filters to the Diffuse texture to make it "yellowish", then export that as your _s.dds file (making sure to export as ATI2N DDS with Mip Maps) That should give you lighter and darker areas, so it appears more realistic.

 

The amount of Red and Yellow determines how shiny it will be 0 --> 128 is just starting to be shiny 129 --> 255 will make it increasingly shiny. For Vinyl, I would recommend a slightly more greenish yellow. For Latex I would recommend a more Redish yellow (very slightly "orange" even) with intensities around 150~180.

[dread74]

Thank you so much - very much appreciated -I will try all that...

 

Umm I dont have the ATI2N save type - I have DDS from plugin I downloaded and... I can see there are mipmaps but I dont really know what they are. I just assumed they were layers they were not being used !?

It seems when I save my dds files in gimp2 it loses the mini maps.

Edited April 28, 2017 by dread74

[Perraine]

Gimme a sec ...

 

Okay ... In Gimp make sure to use "Export As" and select the .dds file extension.

 

For _n,dds and _s.dds files In the settings compression type select "BC5 / ATI2 (3Dc)"

 

For _d.dds files you can use "BC3 / DXT5"

 

(or if you download and install Paint.net, it can save the _d.dds files as the default Microsoft version of "BC5 / DXT5", which has a slightly different/better compression algorithm, so you get less artifacts, it's also used for images that have partial transparency or "blended alpha" parts)

 

Also make sure to select/tick "Generate Mipmaps" (unless you chose to load the mips when you loaded a .dds file, in which case you can "use existing mipmips" option)

 

Don't worry about any of the other "Advanced" options

 

Mip Maps are pre-rendered scaled down versions of the original texture, that are "stored" inside the .dds file (kinda like a .rar or .zip file), which Direct X game engines use when you are viewing an item from various distances. Instead of rendering a 2K texture on an item far away from you or on the other side of the map, it uses one of the pre-generated smaller versions instead. (1024 x 1024, 512 x512, 256x 256 etc) It also saves on having to have the CPU do "on the fly" renders and because the entire file is already loaded, it saves on memory usage and generally external "compression" software (like the nVidia Plugin) does a better job of re-scaling the image than the game engine ever could in real time.

 

It's why it's almost completely worthless to create 4K (4096 x 4096) textures for games like Skyrim or Fallout 4, because the game will virtually never use it unless you run a full 4K setup (which Fallout 4 doesn't natively support, so it's a fake "upscale" anyway) and you are viewing the item from about 2 inches from the camera (like for a screenshot or some such), 2K (2048 x 2048) is all you'll really ever need..

[dread74]

Top man - thx again. Fountain of knowledge! :D

 

This 3d modding certainly falls into the category of "the more you learn, the more you realise there is still to learn"

 

Oh btw, removing the alpha chan on the _s file caused insta crash every time i tried to craft outfit.

 

I'll get there in the end :)