Texturing Metals Not Working in FO4 (cubemaps)

[ehtyeci]

Wait, are you perhaps using black as base color when texturing?

That's the only explanation for a completely black red channel according to your specular image in photoshop.

[Searcherz64]

Indeed - I think the _d map, that is exported as the base color, in my first post being only one color should have been indicated that (though correct me if I'm wrong

 

I am under the impression that the cubemaps here gave metals their shine and color? Trying to give it a silver base color gives this:

Edited July 28, 2018 by Searcherz64

[ehtyeci]

Right.

Converted specular depends on base color, so for metallic finishes in FO4 you cannot have a black base color. In fact, it needs to be gray-ish. It's a limitation of the metal/rough workflow, or rather, a quirk towards FO4, because for the engine to properly show metallics, it _needs_ a black diffuse _but_ a high specular, which is impossible with metal/roughess.

Another thing is that you have too many channels going on in Painter.

You either use:

Diffuse

Specular

Glossiness

(Normal / Height)

or

Base Color

Roughness

Metallic

(Normal / Height)

If you use a combination of them together, they will override each other during the Metal/Rough >> Spec/Gloss conversion process. The process itself in fact assumes you're working exclusively with Metal/Rough channels because Painter needs to perform mathematics on the Base Color in order to extract specularity. Painter also cannot show both M/R and S/G channels simultaneously - they each require a specific shader setup in Painter to work.

So, either remove Diffuse, Specular and Glossiness and work with Base Color, Roughness and Metallic

or

remove Base Color, Roughness and Metallic and work with Diffuse, Specular and Glossiness.

Most of the color properties from metals in FO4, as well as the actual reflections, come from cubemaps, yes. That's because metals have high Fresnel, which is only achievable with a black/dark diffuse texture.

[Searcherz64]

Ahaa I see. Thank you very much for taking the time to write that up - I understand much more now. Those numerous channels would also explain why some sliders for certain channels on layers had no effect. So basically this setup would be correct:

 

 

 

 

providing 3 maps:

 

 

 

and so this final result is correct (same as the previous post)?

 

 

However switching cubemaps still doesn't seem to change the metal from this bland gray/white - something surely must be missing?

 

 

 

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I tested different cubemaps with the creation kit preview, and the cubemap's effect is so subtle it's hardly noticeable unless you adjust the light, and for the vanilla cubemaps I just couldn't see any difference.

 

 

 

These errors show up every time I try to load the model, for what its worth - still showed up when loading the game's own cubemaps

 

It seems like the reflections work somewhat, but the metal texture always stays the same bland gray/white

Edited July 29, 2018 by Searcherz64

[langnao]

Seems like the Envirnoment mapping is not applied even though it is checked under the material file. Check your nif and make sure it did point to the material file, also the shader type and shader flags has environment map selected (this shouldn't matter if it already points to a material file as that takes precedence).

[ehtyeci]

^ This.

 

Seems like we should take a look at the nif, most importantly the mesh and shader node to see what flags are set. The textures are more or less appropriate for what they "should" be, but the shading definitely does not reflect that, no pun intended.

[Searcherz64]

i templated the nif off of some other weapon barrel part's nif by pasting my own mesh into it, copied and pasted BSLightingShaderProperty branch into my own mesh, deleted the game's mesh branch, and changed the "Name" value of BSLightingShaderProperty to point to my BGSM. I thought adjusting the other values in BSLightingShaderProperty didn't matter because it was pointing to my own file - which confused me because it seems like Bethesda did put in their own values, in addition to having them in the BGSM but ultimately I didn't bother with the nif anymore since it did seem to be working

 

 

 

 

 

The textures never couldn't be previewed the nif either, but I dismissed it as one of the quirks for modding FO4 since I couldn't search anything up on this issue (there is an extreme lack of information on fallout 4 modding in general unfortunately. I consider it a miracle that I'm actually getting help on this here haha)

Edited July 29, 2018 by Searcherz64

[ehtyeci]

Textures definitely should show up in Nifskope if the texture paths are correct.The rainbow effect happens when specular and cubemap textures are missing or non-functioning.

You can select the "BSShaderTextureSet" and Ctrl + Delete it, because it's useless when you are pointing to an external material file in the shader node.

You can also remove the Vertex_Colors flag from Shader Flags 2 from the shader node. It doesn't serve a purpose if you don't actually have vertex colors on the mesh.

The only thing I can think of left is that the normals are wrong. Have you tried right clicking the mesh in Nifskope > Mesh > Update Tangent Space?

If you packed the nif and textures and uploaded it, I'd be glad to take a look myself if none of this helped.

[Searcherz64]

I tried updating tangent space to no avail unfortunately. Here you go: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QT6HXDeT19ZPqQXNkZk1cJieiIN_BPs9

 

The original maps/model is in the root, and the files pasted into Fallout 4 are in their respective folders. I also added the substance painter project file as well. Thank you.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Searcherz64

[ehtyeci]

Here's how it looked in preview to me:

Obviously the cubemaps aren't showing since I don't have the custom ones installed, so I changed to the default.

Here's with Shared/Cubemaps/mipblur_DefaultOutside1.dds as the cubemap path in the material file:

So far it's getting the reflections, but the diffuse needs to be black, so I take the diffuse texture into PS, pull the level all the way down, resave it using ITW and same settings:

Here's same as above, but in Nifskope:

And here's in-game:

'

The only thing I touched was changing to the default cubemap in the material file and setting diffuse to black.