CHSBHC seams

[pandabear]

My character has some pretty nasty seams at the neck, wrist and feet area when using CHSBHC. The hand and foot textures seem like distorted vanilla textures as well. Any idea what might be the cause/what I can do to fix it?

 

If It makes any difference I'm using Coverwomen, Snow Leopard Forsworn (has new textures/meshes that add gloss uncluded) and normal map from this thread:

http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=4564

 

 

EDIT: I decided to install CBBE v3 over it and use BodySlide to generate CBBE BBP body. The seams are much less noticable now, but the body doesn't have a gloss effect anymore. I'm not sure if the textures or meshes added the gloss, but I would like to have the same gloss effect for CBBE BBP. Does anyone have files that add gloss to CBBE v3 BBP?

 

EDIT2: I think I remember using nifscope in Oblivion to add gloss to meshes. Can I use the same tool in Skyrim?

[cefwyn]

The whole reason I stopped supporting the CHSBHC body with my normal maps is because it's based on CBBE 0.2 which didn't have a very good UV layout.

 

"Gloss" in Skyrim is controlled by the texture files with the _s suffix which allows the game to simulate the look of realistic skin better, but if you want to make the character look like a barbie or like they bathe in olive oil you can still change the overall specularity in nifskope just like with Oblivion.

[pandabear]

The whole reason I stopped supporting the CHSBHC body with my normal maps is because it's based on CBBE 0.2 which didn't have a very good UV layout.

 

"Gloss" in Skyrim is controlled by the texture files with the _s suffix which allows the game to simulate the look of realistic skin better' date=' but if you want to make the character look like a barbie or like they bathe in olive oil you can still change the overall specularity in nifskope just like with Oblivion.

[/quote']

 

Thanks for explaining how gloss works!

 

As for the CHSBHC seams:

 

That's what it looks like after installing the mod. As you can see, there are horrible seams and the hands and feet don't look right.

 

When installing CBBE v3 over CHSBHC:

 

Now the seams are barely noticable, however the skin looks... sort of patchy. It has a weird texture. Is that controlled by the _s file? Or by the main texture file?

 

I just want a near seamless body with BBP and a smooth high definition texture.

[cefwyn]

The whole reason I stopped supporting the CHSBHC body with my normal maps is because it's based on CBBE 0.2 which didn't have a very good UV layout.

 

"Gloss" in Skyrim is controlled by the texture files with the _s suffix which allows the game to simulate the look of realistic skin better' date=' but if you want to make the character look like a barbie or like they bathe in olive oil you can still change the overall specularity in nifskope just like with Oblivion.

[/quote']

 

Thanks for explaining how gloss works!

 

As for the CHSBHC seams:

 

 

 

That's what it looks like after installing the mod. As you can see, there are horrible seams and the hands and feet don't look right.

 

When installing CBBE v3 over CHSBHC:

 

 

Now the seams are barely noticable, however the skin looks... sort of patchy. It has a weird texture. Is that controlled by the _s file? Or by the main texture file?

 

I just want a near seamless body with BBP and a smooth high definition texture.

 

Something doesn't look right in any of those screenshots really. What normal map were you using for the CHSBHC screens? If they were mine there shouldn't have been any seams except for barely noticeable seams around the hips while those are quite noticeable. The feet look like you didn't have the femfeet mesh installed which is why the feet look a bit off. As for the CBBE screenshot it's kind of hard to tell which texture would cause that. It sort of looks like you have a really flat (pure black) specular texture and the skin texture looks pretty low quality with very noticeable compression errors. The way the lighting looks though it could also be a compressed normal map (which is good for filesize and low-end hardware but usually not worth the visual quality loss).

 

To really be able to tell you whats going on, I would need to see what textures you using exactly.

 

Of the two screenshots I'm posting the first one is using a customized version of navetsea's skin and specular file with my own normal map.

 

 

The second one is the same again except that I'm using the skin provided with CBBE 3 which is mostly flat colored and lets you really see the affect of the normal map and specular map.

 

 

In the first screenshot you'll notice the affect of the specular map mostly around the top of the chest where the lighting is the brightest while the grainy look around the edge of the shadows is a result of my normal map (as is the muscle definition).

 

EDIT: Ignore the horizontal lines that are evident over many areas of the body in the screenshots. The outdoor lighting always seems to do that on my computer. Hopefully Bethesda fix some of their shaders in later patches (though it's looking like there may not be any more patches even though the game definitely needs them).

[pandabear]

I'm using whatever came with the mods in the screenshots i posted.

 

So FemFeet is kind of a prerequisite to CHSBHC if I want the feet to look good? Isn't that only a mesh though? I'd need textures too in that case. I found no hand or feet textures in the CHSBHC mod. Both CHSBHC and CBBE downloaded from skyrim nexus, latest versions.

 

EDIT: I tried installing femfeet and your normalmap for CHSBHC but there was a giant gap between the feet and the legs.

[cefwyn]

The feet texture is part of the body texture so all you need is the mesh. You can get both the hands and the feet with CBBE as was the case when CHSBHC was first released. The most recent version of femfeet uses a different UV layout from what CBBE used since I think CBBE used femfeet 2 or something like that. If you really want things to look their best I recommend using BodySlide to get a body size you like and then use either Navetsea's textures for skin color, specularity, and normals (though I think Navetsea's normal maps look a bit lumpy), or use the ones that came with CBBE 3. My normal maps work with either Caliente's or Navetsea's textures equally well but to completely eliminate seams you'll need to use my head and hands normal maps.

[pandabear]

Okay, so I've sort of given up on CHSBHC.. Too many seams and no easy fix.

 

I've been playing around with the CBBE textures a bit, and I could be completely mistaken; but I think that patchy look is caused by the transition between light gray and dark gray/black in the _s texture file.

 

I took the main texture and did a "Black and White", then darkened it considerably. After seeing the result in-game and afterwards comparing it to the _s textures composition, I saw that the edges around dark areas, where they transition into a brighter gray, would be visible in-game as "patchy" areas.

 

I started over but after Black and White I did several applications of less brightness and less contrast until it was very flat and almost uniformely dark gray. Now it looks really smooth and it's hard to make out any patchiness in-game. However I guess that way I lose a lot of opportunity for added detail to the skin. Anyways, that's what I noticed.

 

I also tested it in daylight, and by comparison I think that the indoor lighting in the screens I posted may be very good at bringing out unwanted detail. Also, I killed an old person by console command and she had a huge patch of missing texture around the hip. Is that normal?

 

EDIT: This was done with khajitsree's smooth HD skin texture (looks like an "upscaled" CBBE v3 texture with different nipple detail) and your normal map for CBBE v3.

 

EDIT2: I set the body meshes to Gloss: 100 and took a screenshot outside;

[cefwyn]

Transitions in the specularity file shouldn't be causing that patchiness, but then it's quite possible that it would if your hardware isn't up to speed since Bethesda did some rather silly vendor hacks which don't play well with some graphics cards. I used to use khajitsree's textures but I think the reason I stopped was because it was upscaled, which introduces artifacts into the skin texture which appears as those patchy blocks.

 

I suggest grabbing the specular file from navetsea's skins on skyrimnexus and see if that still looks blocky and use the skin texture from CBBE 3 which is still higher-resolution than vanilla body textures and has no block artifacts.