ShenGo Posted October 27, 2019 Posted October 27, 2019 I need help once more. I'm trying to make a few wigs from KS Hairdo's (most mods include too many I don't need and lack ones I DO), and I've noticed at least one of the meshes so far has absolutely NO support for any shine. I'm working on Aquaria at the moment, and no matter what I do to it, its completely matte. I know not everyone cares for shiny Skyrim hair, but humor me, lol. I've tried various shader properties, gloss settings (up to 500), specular strengths (up to 20), specular maps, I set the specular color to pure white, and even still, black hair has no shine except where the diffuse map is lighter in places. I even tried flipping normals, facing normals... One setting DID get the gloss to show up, but the diffuse map became solid black... And I can't remember what I did to make it shine anyway... Maybe it was flip normals followed by update tangent space? I'm really just guessing at what to do here... I've been googling for 3 hours now. I don't think I can upload the mesh, since I don't own it, but it CAN be found in the KS Hairdo's mod on Nexus. Any advice would be appreciated.
Seijin8 Posted October 27, 2019 Posted October 27, 2019 45 minutes ago, ShenGo said: I need help once more. I'm trying to make a few wigs from KS Hairdo's (most mods include too many I don't need and lack ones I DO), and I've noticed at least one of the meshes so far has absolutely NO support for any shine. I'm working on Aquaria at the moment, and no matter what I do to it, its completely matte. I know not everyone cares for shiny Skyrim hair, but humor me, lol. I've tried various shader properties, gloss settings (up to 500), specular strengths (up to 20), specular maps, I set the specular color to pure white, and even still, black hair has no shine except where the diffuse map is lighter in places. I even tried flipping normals, facing normals... One setting DID get the gloss to show up, but the diffuse map became solid black... And I can't remember what I did to make it shine anyway... Maybe it was flip normals followed by update tangent space? I'm really just guessing at what to do here... I've been googling for 3 hours now. I don't think I can upload the mesh, since I don't own it, but it CAN be found in the KS Hairdo's mod on Nexus. Any advice would be appreciated. Can you post the nif here? Would speed things along. (For the record, posting it isn't piracy. The mod is freely available and you aren't providing textures. Its fine.) (Also, I checked the normal hair copy of it from v1.61, and it seems fine on my end. Wondering if your mesh isn't messed up in some way.)
ShenGo Posted October 27, 2019 Author Posted October 27, 2019 36 minutes ago, Seijin8 said: Can you post the nif here? Would speed things along. (For the record, posting it isn't piracy. The mod is freely available and you aren't providing textures. Its fine.) (Also, I checked the normal hair copy of it from v1.61, and it seems fine on my end. Wondering if your mesh isn't messed up in some way.) If you're sure... I'm uploading a zip file of the nif (this is a version of which I've made NO changes, aside from copying the hairline branch into the hair nif (as per the wig making tutorial). Other than that, I extracted it straight from my original KS Hairdo's archive especially for this reply. I've also included some screenshots, the first is of Aquaria, which I've pointed to its textures, and set its shader properties to be exactly the same as the second screenshot. You can see ample shine in the second screenshot, but none in the screenshot of Aquaria. Edit: I should also add, both the screencapped hairs look the same in game as they do in Nifskope. Dint999 16 is glossy, Aquaria is dull. Oh, and Aquaria's texture is the original KS edited to be black. I made no changes to the nif itself to get that color. Aquaria Nif.7z
Seijin8 Posted October 27, 2019 Posted October 27, 2019 12 minutes ago, ShenGo said: original KS edited to be black Not "pure" black. If it is 0,0,0 RGB, that could be the source of your issues. Another question: is the new texture loaded direct to the mesh or is it part of a texture set?
ShenGo Posted October 27, 2019 Author Posted October 27, 2019 10 minutes ago, Seijin8 said: Not "pure" black. If it is 0,0,0 RGB, that could be the source of your issues. Another question: is the new texture loaded direct to the mesh or is it part of a texture set? I don't know what you mean by 'pure black', but I desaturated it in Photoshop, then used brightness and contrast to make it darker. I used that exact same method to make the texture for the other hair black, and it's plenty glossy. The new texture is loaded to the mesh (not that one, but the ones I didn't extract straight from the archive, yes). I tried texture sets at first, but the game insisted on using the textures the nif pointed to by default. That is ALSO the exact same method I used for the glossy hair. I figured it couldn't be the texture because the same procedures work fine on other meshes. Edit: Also worth mentioning, I made a red texture for this as well. The red on Dint999 is glossy, the red on KS ia not.
Seijin8 Posted October 27, 2019 Posted October 27, 2019 6 minutes ago, ShenGo said: I figured it couldn't be the texture because the same procedures work fine on other meshes Okay, so, it is hard to troubleshoot your issues when the stuff you provide isn't what you are actually working on, eh? Doesn't do me any good to see a nif that isn't the one you are actually using. Did you modify the normalmap for the hair? If so, what did you set the alpha channel to and did you export in a format that preserves that data?
ShenGo Posted October 27, 2019 Author Posted October 27, 2019 19 minutes ago, Seijin8 said: Okay, so, it is hard to troubleshoot your issues when the stuff you provide isn't what you are actually working on, eh? Doesn't do me any good to see a nif that isn't the one you are actually using. Did you modify the normalmap for the hair? If so, what did you set the alpha channel to and did you export in a format that preserves that data? I didn't touch the normal, no. And I can give you the nif I'm working with. The settings for gloss and specular strength (as well as hair tint) have been changed, but doing so didn't make it shiny. Would you like the texture too?
Seijin8 Posted October 27, 2019 Posted October 27, 2019 1 minute ago, ShenGo said: I didn't touch the normal, no. And I can give you the nif I'm working with. The settings for gloss and specular strength (as well as hair tint) have been changed, but doing so didn't make it shiny. Would you like the texture too? Yes, please. That way I can replicate what you are doing.
ShenGo Posted October 27, 2019 Author Posted October 27, 2019 Coming right up. I only sent the one I'm not working with to show that I have a nif with no gloss even straight out of the package. And I didn't want to send one I'd tinkered with TOO much, because whatever might be done to fix it wouldn't work on other meshes I might have this problem with (cause we'd be undoing all my screw ups too). Here is the one I'm (attempting) to work with. I've sent the normal map too, but really, its just the stock KS normal... Fail.7z
ShenGo Posted October 27, 2019 Author Posted October 27, 2019 I've had this problem before... It turned out to be a simple fix, like flipping normals or disabling vertex colors. But none of that stuff is working this time.
ShenGo Posted October 27, 2019 Author Posted October 27, 2019 Just to make doubly sure its not my nif or texture, I took comparison shots of one of the shiny wigs I made, and the unedited Aquaria hair from KS Hairdo's itself, applied and made black via RaceMenu: enb 2019_10_26 23_56_15_84.bmpenb 2019_10_26 23_56_44_88.bmp Edit: And of COURSE, the pics don't work... I'm calling it a night. I'll reattempt the pictures later.
ShenGo Posted October 27, 2019 Author Posted October 27, 2019 Okay, so there's absolutely NO WAY to get those damned broken pictures out of my last post. I'll try a new post: That's KS Aquaria's mesh and texture straight out of the archive file. The problem I'm experiencing isn't related to the changes I made to the nif, instead, I made those changes BECAUSE of the problem I'm having (that's why I originally sent the unedited mesh. So someone could tell me what changes need to be made to the original to apply specular lighting, instead of having to fix what I've done TOO). I don't feel like KS's nif is broken. I feel like this might have been intentional on the mod author's part, because they wanted the shine to come from the diffuse only, maybe? Its just that... that's not my goal. Rather than painted on shine, I want the mesh itself to be shiny in a way that changes with the lighting and angle, but no matter what I do to it, it looks like my screenshot of the hair worn down. My aim is gloss like the braided hair.
ShenGo Posted October 27, 2019 Author Posted October 27, 2019 PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE!! I opened an SC TW3 hair and saw that its lighting effect 1 and 2 settings were much MUCH higher than KS (AND Dint999, for that matter). As an experiment, I set the KS hair to match and ramped the gloss and specular up, and lo and behold, even with a solid black square as a texture (as further experimentation only), it has gloss! YAY! Solid black: And with the texture I plan on using: Thank you for working with me and trying to help, Sejin8!
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