Specularity Issue Help

[Hjaarendel]

Hi, I have a strange issue with the games specularity that causes metallic weapons to have an incredibly strong shine as if they were lacquered. I've deduced that it is an issue with the game itself rather than a mod conflict as it appears with a clean installation of New Vegas. Disabling specular effects removes the shine completely however it makes the weapons extremely dull and dark.

 

Images of how they appear/how they should look:

 

Millenia's AN-94 in game

 

Millenia's AN-94 on his page

 

Millenia's AKS-74u in game

 

Millenia's AKS-74u on his page

 

Weathered 10mm Pistol

 

9mm Pistol

 

The images don't exactly do the shine justice as its more noticeable while moving the camera.

 

Things I've tried:

-Changing environment mapping and gloss in NifSkope

-Adjusting specularity options in the .ini files

-Clean installing New Vegas

-Changing graphical options

-Using an ENB

-Different lighting mods

-Archive invalidation

And more

 

Any help would be much appreciated!

[dubiousintent]

I suspect "hue saturation" on your monitor or video adapter. (Note those two devices have an interaction.) You have considerably more "red" in your images than those from Millenia's pages, resulting in more of a "gold" than "silver" appearance. You may want to also adjust your monitor's "contrast" setting.

 

-Dubious-

[Hjaarendel]

I suspect "hue saturation" on your monitor or video adapter. (Note those two devices have an interaction.) You have considerably more "red" in your images than those from Millenia's pages, resulting in more of a "gold" than "silver" appearance. You may want to also adjust your monitor's "contrast" setting.

 

-Dubious-

 

Thank you for the reply, I fiddled with all things color, saturation, and contrast on my monitor and video adapter as well as trying a different monitor to no avail. for more clarification towards the comparison photos as they aren't the best at describing what is seen, weapons in game almost have no middle ground for the "shine" they have. Everything on the weapon is completely reflective including non metallic parts like wood or polymer. It feels to me like an issue with specularity in game as adjusting world reflections in NifSkope on meshes as well as gloss reduce the intensity but doing so creates more problems than it solves.

 

Video I took that more accurately shows it

Edited October 5, 2020 by Hjaarendel

[dubiousintent]

I'm not a modeller. I've learned about some of the terminology in "self-defense" to understand some of the problems. So about all I can contribute is some information about the separate files involved (taken from the "TES Texture Guide"). You may already know all of this, but just in case:

• Texture: Detail, surface texture (a bitmap or raster image), or color applied (mapped) to the surface of a shape or polygon. These are saved in various formats and sub-folders under the "<game>\Data\Textures" folder. (Source: Wikipedia). See also: Alpha Channel, Bump Map, Color Map, DDS, DXT, Glow Map, Normal Map.
• File extension: *.dds

• DDS: DDS (Direct Draw Surface) is an image file format, rather like a container for storing image data compressed using one of the DXT codecs. It was developed by Microsoft and introduced with DirectX 7. See also: Alpha Channel, DXT, Mipmap, Texture.
• File Extension: .dds

• DXT: The lossy compressed file format of textures stored in DDS files. Bethesda games primarily use DXT1, 3, and 5 formats. See the [CS Wiki article for the advantages and disadvantages of each. A DDS conversion tool is needed to convert from the compressed file format to one that can be edited by a graphics program (i.e. Paint) and back. See also: DDS, Texture. For an in-depth description of the differences (pro and con) between DDS and DXT files, see the article Working with DDS/DXT Files by Gary "Buckaroo" Neely.
• File Extension: .dds

• Alpha Channel: The property of a texture file that conveys specularity (shininess) information on the mesh used by the 'normal map' for lighting detail, and the transparency of the mesh in the absence of a Normal Map. (Source: Construction Set Wiki). See also: Normal Map, Texture. For an in-depth description of the effects of including alpha channel information (pro and con) in DDS and DXT files, see the article Working with DDS/DXT Files by Gary "Buckaroo" Neely.
• File extension: none; optionally included in "*.dds" files

• Normal Map: A technique used for faking the lighting of bumps and dents instead of using a greyscale image like a Bump Map. They are an extra texture that provides the lighting details about the surface, and can, in some instances, substitute for texture files. Without the normal map's lighting details, the surface will appear black or invisible. These are saved in various sub-folders under the \Data\Textures folder. (Source: TES Alliance and Wikipedia). See also: Bump Map, Color Map, Glow Map, Texture.
• File extension: *_n.dds

• Bump Map: An alias and reference to the lighting detail of a greyscale Normal Map that gives a mesh the appearance of a rough surface. See also: Normal Map, Texture.
• File Extension: .bmp

• Color Map: aka "texture" or "diffuse texture". Defines all of the surface color for your materials, without any of the lighting or shading information. (Source: Understanding the Difference between Texture Maps.) Each model must have two textures...a diffuse texture and a normal map. (Menu/2D items do not require normal maps). (Source: What are all these texture files?.) See also: Bump Map, Normal Map, Texture.
• File Extension: .dds

• Glow Map: Files associated with the texture files sharing the same prefix. Much like the normal map, the engine automatically seeks out the glow map. They control how the material is affected by darkness. By default, the engine will fade a texture to gray as it moves into darkness. The glow map can override that. Black means not affected, and white is fully lit when in complete darkness. It is possible to make a colored glow map that, for example, has black fading into an intense red. Displayed in the light there is no red. In the darkness, the initial red fades out (like a burned out match). Source:Construction Set Wiki. See also: Normal Map, Texture.
• File Extension: _g.dds

Based upon the above, and that this is the first report of such a problem in the six years I've been helping people in this forum, my best guess is you are missing or have overwritten one or more of the related texture files. All "art asset" files present in a "textures" folder under "Data" are "overwrites" which "ArchiveInvaliation" causes to be used instead of the original versions in the "Fallout_*.BSA" files. As only one version of a given filename and folder path can exist, the latest one installed will always "win" by overwriting any previously installed file.

Probably the simplest solution is to re-install the specific weapon mods you are having problems with. If that doesn't resolve the problem, then you need to look into a "mod conflict".

-Dubious-

Edited October 5, 2020 by dubiousintent

[Hjaarendel]

I made a clean installation of New Vegas with no modifications and it is still present even on the vanilla weapons. I have a feeling I'm not gonna find a fix anytime soon, however I appreciate the help.

[KiCHo666]

What you are describing is so called Environment Map (a fake reflection), not specularity (realtime LIGHT ONLY reflections).
It actually looks like it should supposed to.
Milennia took some pictures while in INDOOR cells and environment shader indoors is less intensive that outdoors. That's how that particular shader works. Not much you can do about it unless you want to edit an environment map MASK of some particular weapon. It usually has _m.dds at the end of the file name. Making it darker will reduce the intensity of the reflections.

Hope it helps.

[Hjaarendel]

What you are describing is so called Environment Map (a fake reflection), not specularity (realtime LIGHT ONLY reflections).

It actually looks like it should supposed to.

Milennia took some pictures while in INDOOR cells and environment shader indoors is less intensive that outdoors. That's how that particular shader works. Not much you can do about it unless you want to edit an environment map MASK of some particular weapon. It usually has _m.dds at the end of the file name. Making it darker will reduce the intensity of the reflections.

 

Hope it helps.

 

I figured that Environment Mapping was some form of specularity as turning off specularity in the ini files of the game disable the reflections, thank you for clarifying. Regarding the dds file how would I go about editing the enviroment map mask?

[KiCHo666]

It's a dds format, so you could use Paint.Net, photoshop or GIMP with dds extension. Just put a semi transparent black layer over the mask in one of those apps and export it as DDS.

[Hjaarendel]

It's a dds format, so you could use Paint.Net, photoshop or GIMP with dds extension. Just put a semi transparent black layer over the mask in one of those apps and export it as DDS.

 

Apologies for the hiatus, I narrowed down the more intense environment mapping on vanilla guns to the Weapon Mesh Improvement Mod and it's just a matter of preference I'm assuming. And I believe the difference between in game and Millenia's images are due to his custom environment map shader. I also came across your fix for his environment map shader, do you know how I can obtain his unaltered shader for testing?

[KiCHo666]

Millenia's env map shader won't affect the intensity of reflections on objects. It will just make normal maps have more effect on it (meaning, reflections will "bend" more depending on normal map roughness).
What do you mean by "unaltered"? Game uses its default env map shader already.