making stalhrim armors transparent

[Sceadugengan]

Today I've discovered a nice mod, which gives stalhrim armors refraction and makes weapons and shield transparent.

I wanted to achieve the same transparency for the armors aswell.

I don't have much experience handling models and textures, though, so I tried my best taking the already transparent weapons as example.

In the end I still gave up and am here now asking for advice...

 

The tools I used are NifSkope and Gimp.

I've also uploaded the edited light armor texture.

 

Can you tell me what to do to get the results I want?

(baby steps for dummies, please)

stahlrim_armor_light_female_body.dds

[yatol]

that's in paint (no idea on what to click in photoshop or gimp to do that)

 

you open the texture twice and the black&white texture

you select the black

copy paste that on the texture 2

delete

add a calc

reselect the texture with only the blue stuff

merge that with the calc, moving around the slider to make it more or less transparent

go back to black&white texture

copy the black

paste that in your transparent texture

inverse selection

copy your transparent blue

paste it in original texture

and save that as dxt5

 

then you open the armor nif, and if there's no nialphatransparency, you open the shield nif and copy paste it

and you check if there's a body mesh in that nif (if there's no body.... it's the back of the armor you will throught the transparent stuff)

 

 

 

 

[Sceadugengan]

Regarding Pain.net. I believe I've achieved something similar with Gimp.

At least the blue stuff is transparent.

The only difference was I didn't save it as dxt5 in my previous attempt.

 

I did another attempt this time saving it with dxt5 compression and I also copied the NiAlphaProperty from the shield's NIF from the previously mentioned mod.

(There was no NiAlphaTransparency node)

Yet I didn't see a difference - no transparency.

 

For my next attempt I installed Paint.net to recreate your steps, I got stuck at adding a calc, though.

No idea what this is and Google didn't give me an answer either.

 

This is really frustrating.

Especially since I can't see a change even when I edit something.

[yatol]

calque, between image and adjustment above

it's just adding a nothing texture onto the original

then you merge 20-80% of original texture onto that to make it more or less transparent

 

you just have to tell nifskope where to find the textures to see whatever you do to it in the nif

 

 

 

 

[Sceadugengan]

I see, you were talking about layers.

That's what a language barrier is, I guess.

 

Thanks, I'll give it another try.

 

Edit:

Seems like I finally managed to do it.

The mod i created in MO for the replacer files wasn't active, so no wonder I didn't see any changes.

I remember ticking the mod, though...

Turns out your way and my attempt via Gimp both work.

 

Thank you very much.

[Rynnes Master]

Care to share your result?  Doing so would be greatly appreciated.