Glow Maps - Ah!

[NefariousNyx]

Alrighty, so after getting a brief familiarization with the CS and a decently thorough understanding of mod organizers, I've decided I don't only want to use other people's mods, but learn to make my own. That is, after all, where half the fun is. So I've been messing with GIMP and i get the basics of NIFskope so far, and I've been reading EVERYTHING on glow maps, but for the life of me cannot get mine to work. I'm starting simple, and simply trying to get the Dark hand on the DB armor to glow a little...or a lot...or at all...

I isolated the hand in GIMP and that is now white, and the rest of the armor texture is black, and i saved that under the exact same name as the normal texture and normal map, but with the _g. So I have darkbrotherhooodm, darkbrotherhoodm_n, and darkbrotherhoood_g, all in the same folder, and the basic texture in NIFskope follows the path to darkbrotherhooodm, so it should (and does, I believe) automatically pick up the normal map and glow map as well, but I'm getting no glow. I've set the emmisive color for the shoulder piece to white, the glow map has been saved as DXT1 with mips, the normal map with DXT3 with mips too, and both have white alpha channels. I've also tried listing all three textures in NIFskope in their respective branch, even though Oblivion should automatically attribute them to the mesh...SO, what on earth am I doing wrong?

 

EDIT- Turns out my file paths were wrong in TES CS, cleared that all up, and now it works. Kinda. Its definitely "glowing", because the red in the hand is much brighter, but it isn't really glowing glowing. I'm guessing this is due to the red from the texture being the original dark, rusty blood red. So I guess my question is, in order to get things to really glow, very bright colors have to be used? Is there any way to get more subdued colors to actually glow? As in they'd be the only things visible in a pith black game environment.

 

Oooooooo, changed up the colors from blood red to fiery yellow and red, and then used the "dimple" gradient option, followed by some smudged black border for a burnt edge look, and wowee, that is DEFINITELY a glow map. Holy cow. cool.

Edited February 26, 2012 by NefariousNyx

[Lanceor]

I'm giving you a kudos for that heckuva first post. :)

 

You had a problem and came to the forum to ask. While waiting for an answer, you kept trying things out until eureka! It worked! Persistence like that is what separates those who give up after a week of modding from those who go on to become great modders. :)

 

Oh, since it's your first post...

 

http://images.uesp.net//c/c4/Fishystick.jpg

[Exraycatt]

@Nefarious: I've been having the same problem. I've drudged through everything I can find online about it and have followed instructions perfectly as far as I can tell. What did you mean the paths in the CS were off? I wouldn't think anything would have to be changed. Does there need to be any reference to an actual texture in the CS?

 

I've tried the simple way - just making a black and white dds file and naming it _g.dds and that did nothing. I've tried adding the texture path to the glow map in nifskope and that did nothing. I've looked at other meshes to see where their maps were represented in nifskope and couldn't duplicate it (i.e., spriggan, dawnbreaker). So I'm curious what you changed that fixed it.

 

Thanks

 

-XRC

[chakaru11]

I am a bit confused about the usage of dtx-3 format you described. In my experience it causes more problems than it solves. Usually textures with alpha map usage (like glow maps which work with transparency) are best saved as dtx-5.

 

exray_catt: The way glowmaps appear in Nifskope has nothing to do with the fact wether they show up ingame or not. Using the "Add glowmap" option under NiTexturingProperty is just a preview option.

 

It can, however, help you see if a glowmap works. To be sure that it is visible ingame, you can set both the diffuse AND the emissive color of a mesh to white. For that, highlight your mesh and click on the little icon next to "NiMaterialProperty" and set emissive and diffuse color in the menu that pops up to white.

 

Keep in mind that most glowmaps are supposed to work with transparency (meaning that only selected parts of a mesh are supposed to glow). Which means they NEED an alpha channel. If your glowmap doesn't have one, create one. Then copy paste the texture into the alpha channel, edit the saturation a bit so that the glowy bits are white and the rest of your texture is black) and save everything as a dtx 5.

Edited March 4, 2012 by chakaru11