LE Custom Weapon Problems

[heavywaters]

I have added a custom sword to Skyrim based on this model.

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/049/f/1/vorpal_sword_by_heavywaters-d4q7pwr.png

 

For the most part it works fine in-game but there are three things that are giving me problems.

 

1.) The biggest problem would be the normal map,

I'm getting really bad lines at the edges of the UV map.

(Isn't tangent space supposed to prevent the normal map from doing this?)

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/708891-1346261919.jpg

 

2.) The entire model disappears when I try to place it in a weapon rack.

 

3.) I can't quite figure out how to make the texture look chrome like in the render instead of white-ish.

 

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

~Heavywaters

[Ghogiel]

1. Tangent space basically refers to some technical BS> In other words Magic. Won't prevent s*** if you don't feed it vertex data and texture data it doesn't like the look of. Anyway without nerding it up, I think your tangent space + pixel color on the normal map is borked. a>The normal map orientation is +x -y. b>You need correct tangents and binormals in the nifs data. c> And the vertex normals need to be as they were on the model when you did the bake, if you modifiy the vertex normals post baking your s*** is broke. If you have issues on any of those things, then you will probably get a seam like that. My first guess is you have a +x +y normal map. in other words you need to flip the G channel in the normal map so that it is lit from bottom to top and not the other way). If you have baked as a +x -y, then it's one of the other 2 things, likely your TS in the nif is not set up correctly.

 

3. Darken the diffuse texture a tad, getting near bright colors is somewhat challenging in game renderers and looks like magnesium if you do it wrong.

It's a really smooth polished surface, whack the gloss up on it.

It has a highly reflective quality so give it some bright ass specular tones in the spec map.

Being metal... change the specular color tint to something like a light blue to give the specular highlights some color contrast and make them pop some, metals usually tint their specular reflections.

Use the environment map shader to fake the chrome reflection effect.

Edited August 29, 2012 by Ghogiel

[Isilmeriel]

Did you happen to only bake half of the model and then just symmetried to make the other side? That'd explain the very obvious seams. If you intend to bake half a symmetrical mesh, you need to make sure the other half has a different smoothing group than the first.

 

To make a chrome effect, use a really dark diffuse texture, and then apply an envmap, perhaps the aptly named textures\cubemaps\chrome_e.dds

[heavywaters]

I found that an Ambient Occlusion map bakes out screwy if you try to overlap texture-space in the UV map, even if the two halves are identical.

So no I don't bake only half of the model, but I did some experimenting and found that after exporting the Nif back out to an .obj that the body was now in two halves along the UV seams.

I have no idea why because the original hilt part of the model was, and still is one piece.

 

I did accomplish a decent looking chrome effect by using a nearly black diffuse texture with the chrome_e.dds cube map and setting the specular, gloss and env. map strength as high as possible.

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/708891-1346561996.jpg

 

I inverted the green channel in the normal map as per Ghogiel's suggestion and that helped reduce the seams a lot.

Between that and getting the chrome material right, those lines are almost gone.

[Ghogiel]

but I did some experimenting and found that after exporting the Nif back out to an .obj that the body was now in two halves along the UV seams.

I have no idea why because the original hilt part of the model was, and still is one piece.

 

Usually when you export to game formats, UV verts and mesh verts... are all just verts. Every vert on the mesh is assigned a number. As a consequence UV verts also exist on the mesh. 'extra' UV verts, such as those you would have down a UV seam, also exist on the mesh. So just think of it that there is a seam on the mesh there, you just can't see it because those verts vertex normals are both pointing the same way so the surface looks smooth and not split, but it really is. Once you export back to obj it will do a dump of the vertex data, 'extra' verts along UV seams and all.

 

 

This 8sided cylinder has 34 verts.

 

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c85/lego-botz/other/8sidedcylinder32verts.jpg

 

Export a cylinder like that and go into the nifs vertex array and move verts about to dissect it to see this concept in action.

 

I found that an Ambient Occlusion map bakes out screwy if you try to overlap texture-space in the UV map, even if the two halves are identical.

Before baking just offset the stacked UV island by a factor of 1 so they occupy their own space outside the 0-1 space....

http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/images/209926-1259192971.jpg

 

 

which you would have to do anyway or else the tangent space calculation breaks along the UV seam and you will get a lighting error. (but that isn't your seam issue because if I understand you, you did a full unwrap.)

http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/images/209926-1259192939.jpg

Edited September 5, 2012 by Ghogiel

[Isilmeriel]

Yeah I always send mirrored UVs to the +1 tile.

[heavywaters]

I still don't know why my sword has issues with weapon racks.

Does it have something to do with improper flags in the Nif?

 

Any suggestions would be great.

Edited September 19, 2012 by heavywaters

[Deleted19761User]

I still don't know why my sword has issues with weapon racks.

Does it have something to do with improper tags in the Nif?

 

Any suggestions would be great.

 

Depends on if you've created your sword into a Nif right from the get go, or if you went the Obj export/import route. If your colission model isn't done right or using that of another weapons then I think that causes your weapon rack issue. Going the obj export and import way, I haven't had issues with any of the custom weapons I've done.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Guest

[heavywaters]

I imported the obj into Nifskope then copy/pasted the NiTriShape branches into the vanilla silver sword Nif.

The collision should be really close to the dimensions of my sword model so I didn't mess with the vanilla one.

 

Which brings to mind another annoyance: I can't get Nifskope to render the collision mesh for any Nifs.

Edited September 19, 2012 by heavywaters

[pufthemajicdragon]

I imported the obj into Nifskope then copy/pasted the NiTriShape branches into the vanilla silver sword Nif.

The collision should be really close to the dimensions of my sword model so I didn't mess with the vanilla one.

 

Which brings to mind another annoyance: I can't get Nifskope to render the collision mesh for any Nifs.

 

I've found a lot of vanilla skyrim meshes have collision that renders small (if I recall, around 1/3 size) in NifSkope, which often leaves it occluded by the TriShapes. Specifically the ground model for Elven Armor did this to me, and when I went to import a custom mesh into the game with "proper" collision in NifSkope, I had der uber large collision boundaries in game. I went into NifSkope and scaled my collision down until it fit in testing.

 

I also enabled EVERYTHING in the Render menu.

 

:edit:

I just double checked and the size difference is closer to 10%. It's probably something funny in Nifskope not supporting Skyrim meshes yet, unless you got one of the hax0red testing nif.xml files, which I don't so I'm just guessing here.

 

Way cool looking sword, by the way :) So much better than my feeble modeling skills.

Edited September 19, 2012 by pufthemajicdragon