Trouble with NIFs and Textures

[Tallcastle]

for some reason the armor I created is 1. displaying too dark, and 2. not reflecting light.

 

Ive fiddled with the base texture and the _m and _n versions, making them lighter or messing with contrast. I've also tried a large number of settings in Nifskope, nothing seems to make a difference. First picture is standard for armor, the next two shows the armor in darkness and standard ebony armor for contrast to show how light is not refracting.

 

My Armor In Daylight

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh103/Tallcastle/ScreenShot3.jpg

 

Light Reflection picture 1 (my armor not reflecting)

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh103/Tallcastle/ScreenShot6.jpg

 

Light Reflection picture 2 (Standard Ebony reflecting normal)

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh103/Tallcastle/ScreenShot5.jpg

[Perraine]

The NitriShapeData for the NiTriShape, what did you set the Number UV Sets at?

What's the Has Normals? Yes or No?

What's the Has Vertex Colours? Yes or No?

 

Also what setting did you use for the Shader Type in the BSLightingShaderProperty of the NiTriShape?

What are the Shader Flags 1 and Shader Flags 2 settings?

[Tallcastle]

The following settings are for the Torso part of the armor (likely the worst offender of the 4)

 

Number UV Sets = 1 (NIF exported from blender with 4097)

Has Normals = NO (Exported from Blender as YES)

Has Vertex Colors = YES (not sure what this does)

 

Shader Flag 1 = specular, skinned, environment Mapping, recieve shadows, cast shadows, own emit, remappable textures, ZBuffer test

 

Shader Flag 2 = ZBuffer write, double sided, Glow Map, envmap light fade

(gauntlets and boots don't have 'Glow Map')

 

 

Thank you for your help

[Tallcastle]

well i did some more fiddling with Nifskope. this time i left, Number UV Sets and Has Normals alone. (the tutorial i was looking at told me to change them) and both problems got fixed (sort of, now some things are reflecting light that the _m texture doesn't have highlighted) i think i can address that with a little tweaking.

 

Exporting from blender always gives 4097 UV Sets. Yet vanilla meshes will very on this number. Does it need to be adjusted at all?

[Tallcastle]

next question. The questions you asked led me to a fix for the other problems but now my cloth textures are shiny (i thaught that had to do with the _m texture but even blacked out they are still reflective)

 

Picture 1 Fixed Armor (Thank you for the help)

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh103/Tallcastle/ScreenShot7.jpg

 

Picture 2 shiny cloth

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh103/Tallcastle/ScreenShot8-1.jpg

[Perraine]

Looks cool ... Looking almost FO3 Power Armorish ...

 

The "Number UV Sets" should generally be left at 4097, not sure why, but that seems to be the consensus ...

Has normals is generally "yes" and, again generally, has vertex colors is normally "no" .. .I don't really know the difference either, but that's what works for me, so "when in Rome" i always say ...

 

The shiny cloth/parts issue is most likely caused by the alpha channel on the normal map. Even with meshes that use a ***_m .dds file, you still will need to tweak this in order to get the lighting/reflectivity right, It's hard to explain, but the ***_m.dds files seems to affect the "brightness" of the various parts, but it's the alpha channel on the normal map that affects "glossiness" ...

 

TBH Skyrim's lighting and texture handling is really messed up ...

[Tallcastle]

managed to figure that ... it seems to have something to do with the Alpha Channel of the .dds files, I'm also getting the impression that the 'Glow Map' I added to make the Gem in the Torso and the Helmet Eyes glow is also having an adverse effect on the rest of the armor ... either way I can't seem to get the shine to go away ... for the sake of my sanity I'm Just going to go back into blender and rework the armor, removing all cloth textures and replace them with leather and metal.

 

and as to your 'Power Armor' observation. you are right on the mark. this is my 1st draft of a "Dwarven Clockwork Power Armor"

 

when I feel up to it I'm going to try adding jets of steam from vents in the torso and a clockwork backpack as a power pack. Gods only knows how long it will take me to figure THAT out, let alone figure out how to implement those changes in the creation kit.

 

Like i said its just a 1st draft so if you have any suggestions feel free to fire them my way and ill see about implementing them.

 

+1 Kudos to you by the way

[Perraine]

No worries ... There is a Dwemer Exoskeleton Mod (sort of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ish) that, from the description, has the steam effect, so maybe you could look at that mesh or talk to the mod author ...

You could also maybe try playing around a little with the Specular Strength, Emissive Colour, Lighting Effect, and Glossiness settings to get rid of or minimize unwanted colours/lighting effects, also maybe try changing (or creating your own) cubemap texture and see if that helps, some of them can be really bright under certain lighting conditions

Because the cubemap texture gets repeated across the whole mesh, if it's a really small but colourful one, like bloodshinybright.dds(sp?) it can be very bright in game.