[Help] Need help figuring out (glass) transparency issue in Nifskope

[Joshawowo]

So I've been working on a few mods over the past few weeks which are supposed to give glass weapons and armor a more realistic transparency than what I've previously seen from transparency mods. I've been able to get a look that I like, but they've come with a few graphical glitches that I haven't been able to figure out, and have prevented my mod from being as good as it can be.

 

Here's the links to my mods:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9892

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=10751

 

In the first version, the weapons and shield (and armor to a less noticeable extent) had the right transparency that I wanted, but had some lighting errors. When outdoors, they would appear to be in full sunlight, even if they were under shade. Indoors, they wouldn't be affected by certain lights such as fire. Here's an example:

 

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/10751-1-1330478460.jpghttp://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/9892-1-1330477394.jpg

 

As the pictures demonstrate, I was able to find a solution to the problem. I'll backtrack and explain what settings I've used. The first version simply added a NiAlphaProperty to the mesh and used a flag setting of 237 and a threshold of 0 (and added a specific alpha channel to the texture of course). Then, yesterday actually, I came across a mod that seemed to have better results than me, so I tried those settings. The changes were this: I changed the NiAlphaProperty to a flag setting of 4845 and threshold of 128, then in the Shader Flags 2 under BSLightingShaderProperties, I added SF_7. At first glance this seemed to fix the issue, but actually it just gave it another issue, possibly even a worse one. Now, apparently shadows that are behind your character (when viewed in 3rd person) showed up ON your character. It's hard to explain, or even show in screenshots (it looks much worse in motion), but here's a shot showing what I mean:

 

http://i.imgur.com/jnByK.jpg

 

Oh, and in both versions, your character doesn't cast shadows anymore :/

 

Personally, on the weapons and the shield it doesn't bother me much, but it looks ridiculous on the armor. I've been trying to fiddle around with various settings in Nifskope, trying different SF_# combos, trying a few different AlphaProperty's, but haven't ran into any luck. To be perfectly honest, I'm rather new to 3D in general, and have 0 knowledge of how shaders are written or work etc. I'm hoping that anyone with a better understanding of how this works can help me. If anyone has any suggestions, or needs any more information on what settings I'm using, please let me know!

 

I leave you with a picture of me trying to figure out Nifskope:

http://img.anongallery.org/img/4/1/i-have-no-idea-what-im-doing-dog.jpg

[Sader325]

This is why I gave up after making any of my Mystic Elven Armor Weapons (after the shield) transparent. I would have loved to have made my gemmed weapons transparent as well. But I couldn't justify putting up with the bugs that came with using the transparency flags.

 

I had originally planned to make these weapons slightly transparent:

 

http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/1600/tesv2008012119303123.jpg

 

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/2238/tesv2012012020563516.jpg

 

But after NUMEROUS problems with the shield I felt it wasnt worth it.

Edited February 29, 2012 by Sader325

[Joshawowo]

Yeah I'm having the bad feeling that there may, in fact, not be a solution to the issues. I'm kind of bummed, because I feel like my mod could've been a great idea if it didn't come with a whole bunch of glitches. I may just have to leave it as is, and just let people use it if they can look past the graphical glitches. This thread post (and I made a post on the Nifskope forums) is kind of my last effort and figuring out the problems, before walking away and moving on. Thank you for your response, and excellent mod btw, your shield is actually what made me use those settings (not initially realizing the shadow glitch, but personally it doesn't bother me that much on the shield).

 

I'll probably just revert the armor back to normal, but keep the weapons and shield with the new settings. I'm gonna wait and see if I can get some more feedback from people saying which they like and don't like.

[dikr]

I had a similar issue with my Bouncy Bodices mod and I played around with settings forever to stop the underlying body's shadows from being projected on my bodice model which have an alpha property and just now I finally figured it out: it was solved for me after unchecking the AssumeShadowMask flag in the shader 2 flags of the armor NiTriShape's BSLightingProperties. Hope this will help you but possibly it is unrelated.

 

The alpha properties that I use are:

Flags: 4845

Treshold: 0

 

Good luck!

 

dikr

[Ironman5000]

Are these any good to you?

 

I can't remember how I did them but I thought they looked ok, I didn't notice any bugs like this.