Texturing problems

[hornplayer832]

Hey so I have been working on some textures on a glove mod, trying to get used to it. I'm trying to use the main dds, _n, _e, _s, and _m textures to try to make a shiny metallic glove, similar to the metal body mods. So far the only texturing I have done that was successful was in fallout 3 and that was because all the gloss/transparency etc was done in nifskope. Would anyone with enough skill be willing to talk me through a good way of making say a texture of something that would be reflective, glossy, like polished metal? All my attempts at anything have created a dull matte finish. I can't seem to get a gloss let alone reflectiveness :(

 

Also, maybe a better way of asking is, if I were to take an existing say...body texture and fill it in with just a solid color, what steps would I take from there to get the textures to work as I need them to? I'm having the hardest time finding tutorials that work for me :(

[ResolveThatChord]

I think the simplest soltution is to copy the shader data from a vanilla object. Find an object that has the kind of metallic sheen you're after, then find out which mesh it uses (this can be done in the CK by finding the object and double clicking it).

Then extract it from meshes.bsa using a .bsa extractor.

Next open the extracted .nif in nifskope. The mesh should have a NiTriShape data block; inside it is the BSLightingShaderProperty block which has all the shader data. Right Click on the BSLightingShaderPropery block and select Block->copy branch.

 

Next, paste it into your nif by right clicking and selecting block->paste branch. Delete your NiTriShape's existing BSLightingShaderProperty block (ctrl+delete). Select the NiTriShape and scroll down to the bottom of it's block details list in the bottom panel. At the bottom there is a section "properties". Expand it by clicking the little triangle. Inside there should be two lines with "none" as their value. Click on "none" on one and type the number in front of the BSLightingShaderProperty you pasted. Doing this should put the BSLightingShaderProperty inside the NiTriShape.

 

Finally, assign textures by opening the BSLightingshaderProperty->BSShaderTextureSet, and expand "textures" in the block details list.

There will be filepaths to the textures; edit them to point to yours.

 

Also, make sure your normal map has a specular map in it's alpha channel.

 

Hope this helps!