Need advice on normals and enviroment textures for these weapons

[Sursed]

I an working on a set of mashup retextured weapons with damascus steel pattern

These are the latest versions of the sword and the dagger

 

 

These are the previous versions

Spoiler

 

I am not satisfied with the shining and reflections of the blades. Can anyone advise me on cubemaps (which one to choose) and the color of the normals?

[Vioxsis]

I'm not sure what you mean by "colour of the normals".

But for the cube maps, specular stuff its pretty simple.

 

First you want to change some settings in the BSLightingShaderProperty of your nif

1, set skyrim shader type to 'environment map'

2, set in shader flags 1 the environment mapping to on (specular should already be set on)

3, in shader flags 2 set envMap light fade to on

4, there are 2 settings that control the intensity the first is 'Specular Strength' the other is 'Environment Map Scale' the latter i remember being the most fun/useful.

 

Once the nif has been set you need to link/make the textures for it.

Using a cube map in the above configuration will give the mesh the cube maps colour (when it is aloud to) so choosing the right cube map is important and now kinda easy since you just have to pick the one closets to what you want.

Probably a steel one in this case, but experimenting is always good.

The specular map (or as its being used now the environment mask (cube maps = environment map)) has the simple job of masking white = 0% masked black = 100% masked with grey being how you gradient it.

 

So what this means is you will be putting the metal (shiny stuff) detail in the specular since any detail in the diffuse will be washed out by the cube map.

It is sometimes a good idea to split the mesh by materials used (like having the leather handle being a separate NiTriShape since no cube map is needed or wanted)

 

Though this is all from memory and digging out an old sword nif i did apparently 4 years ago...

So if something's not right just tell me i'm an idiot.

[Sursed]

1 hour ago, Vioxsis said:

I'm not sure what you mean by "colour of the normals".

But for the cube maps, specular stuff its pretty simple.

 

First you want to change some settings in the BSLightingShaderProperty of your nif

1, set skyrim shader type to 'environment map'

2, set in shader flags 1 the environment mapping to on (specular should already be set on)

3, in shader flags 2 set envMap light fade to on

4, there are 2 settings that control the intensity the first is 'Specular Strength' the other is 'Environment Map Scale' the latter i remember being the most fun/useful.

 

Once the nif has been set you need to link/make the textures for it.

Using a cube map in the above configuration will give the mesh the cube maps colour (when it is aloud to) so choosing the right cube map is important and now kinda easy since you just have to pick the one closets to what you want.

Probably a steel one in this case, but experimenting is always good.

The specular map (or as its being used now the environment mask (cube maps = environment map)) has the simple job of masking white = 0% masked black = 100% masked with grey being how you gradient it.

 

So what this means is you will be putting the metal (shiny stuff) detail in the specular since any detail in the diffuse will be washed out by the cube map.

It is sometimes a good idea to split the mesh by materials used (like having the leather handle being a separate NiTriShape since no cube map is needed or wanted)

 

Though this is all from memory and digging out an old sword nif i did apparently 4 years ago...

So if something's not right just tell me i'm an idiot.

This all seems to be quite right. And I have already done the most (if not all) of this. My problem is that I can't choose a sutable cubemap. The steel one is to bright. I have tried several others. the most interesting (but not suitable) is the ore_iron_e cubemap. It gives the blades a kind of vallirian\evil shine but it works only on in game sunlight. the light from a fire surprisingly does not make the evil shine appear. 

So for now after several tries I modyfied the steel cubemap (made it darker). But I am not entierly satisfied. And I do not understand how the effect is applyed so I just try at random.

As for the normals, I have heard that their alpha property has impact on the shine of the corresponding nifs in game..

[Vioxsis]

Does changing Specular Strength alter how bright it is? with 1.0 being default trying it at 0.5 to half it.

Not sure on that though.

The normal maps alpha is a gloss map, white is full gloss and black being no gloss, grey being your way of controlling it.

It will look like the specular map most of the time but can be altered to get different looks.

[Sursed]

43 minutes ago, Vioxsis said:

Does changing Specular Strength alter how bright it is? with 1.0 being default trying it at 0.5 to half it.

Not sure on that though.

The normal maps alpha is a gloss map, white is full gloss and black being no gloss, grey being your way of controlling it.

It will look like the specular map most of the time but can be altered to get different looks.

So, do you mean it is better to leave the normals be and work with cubemaps?

[Vioxsis]

3 hours ago, Sursed said:

So, do you mean it is better to leave the normals be and work with cubemaps?

 

For metal it is, but even then skyrim expects there to be a gloss map in the normals alpha, if it has no it sets it to white meaning full gloss.

But since the cube/mask setup and the gloss map have similar effects it does kinda make gloss redundant, but with some setups you can make use of both.

Though as i said you do need the gloss map, you just don't need to put so much detail in it as you would when using it in conjunction with cube map and mask.

[Sursed]

9 minutes ago, Vioxsis said:

 

For metal it is, but even then skyrim expects there to be a gloss map in the normals alpha, if it has no it sets it to white meaning full gloss.

But since the cube/mask setup and the gloss map have similar effects it does kinda make gloss redundant, but with some setups you can make use of both.

Though as i said you do need the gloss map, you just don't need to put so much detail in it as you would when using it in conjunction with cube map and mask.

Thanks. I will experiment

[SmedleyDButler]

This might help. Most of it is stuff you already know, but there's maybe a few clarifications in here which will give you the answers you need? 

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1188259-bslightingshaderproperty-basics/

[Sursed]

2 minutes ago, SmedleyDButler said:

This might help. Most of it is stuff you already know, but there's maybe a few clarifications in here which will give you the answers you need? 

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1188259-bslightingshaderproperty-basics/

Thanks there are useful things there indeed

[Siegmeyer]

Don't mess with the normal maps. If you want further control over the range and brightness of the environment reflection, you can adjust the brightness/contrast of the environment mask (texture that ends with _m) in photoshop/gimp. 

 

If you're just looking for a good cubemap, you can try the one that Billyro's weapons use. It might be too shiny for your taste, though.

 

Also, is the pommel mesh your own work or from another mod? I'd be curious about the source of it, if it's the latter. EDIT: think I've found one part of it: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/63090

[Sursed]

4 hours ago, Siegmeyer said:

If you're just looking for a good cubemap, you can try the one that Billyro's weapons use. It might be too shiny for your taste, though.

 

Also, is the pommel mesh your own work or from another mod? I'd be curious about the source of it, if it's the latter. EDIT: think I've found one part of it: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/63090

Billyro's cubemap was one of the fist that I tried, And, yes, it is too shiny...

 

Yes, the base is from Lozenge s145 shortsword. The decor and the thorn is from this mod https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/57467?

the grip is from Billyro's imperial captain's sword. The blade texture is mine.

 

I have recently reworked the blade texture - made it much less symetric

[SmedleyDButler]

The asymmetry is a big improvement.

[Sursed]

I have asked the authors of the mods I used for their permission to release this set.

For now I have only the permission from Billyro. Two more left

[Sursed]

Kamas