Is there any way to have both alpha blending + shadows on hair?

[jevexok759]

When playing New Vegas, some of the best hairs I've seen make use of alpha blending for that soft and supple look devoid of harsh jagged edges. I'm thinking of doing that for Fallout 4 but so far no dice.

 

In short, the problem seems to be:

 

- Alpha blending on BGSM -> mesh doesn't show up in game

- Alpha blending on BGEM -> mesh isn't affected by lighting (no shadows, no specular)

 

Here's a Reddit post I made relating to the problem: https://www.reddit.c...comments/nuwcoe

[TheBottomhoodofSteel]

 

A Wip of the 911 hair From my Anto Hair Ports, this is the closest I got, but it had waaaaaay too many problems to even list, for starters, the hair was coming out extremely bright, Second, ENB liked to break it and third It wasn't even as good as I wanted it to be. 

 

I did leave some of the nif work I did in the 911 hair, but I'll have to dig for the material files. 

 

BGEM is not designed for hair/clothing and it'll have numerous issues. I would recommend not touching it at all. 

Edited June 10, 2021 by TheBottomhoodofSteel

[South8028]

I do not know if I understand the situation correctly, so I apologize if I did not understand correctly.

A mesh with bsEffectFx material may disappear when you try to mix it with another same material or bgsm with a fine alpha mesh, or an altered alpha channel. I was trying to put an animated mesh with bgem inside another mesh with bgem. After a minute, he disappeared, and he could only be seen from above, or under certain lighting conditions at a certain angle. Then I replaced the material of the animated mesh with the usual bsLightingFx with an alpha channel (I needed a color music effect, those are imitation of transparent lights inside the glass). There were no more problems. Generally. A mesh with bgem disappears through another bgem, or bgsm with an alpha channel, but a bgsm mesh with an alpha channel does not disappear through a mesh with bgem.

[jevexok759]

13 hours ago, TheBottomhoodofSteel said:

 

A Wip of the 911 hair From my Anto Hair Ports, this is the closest I got, but it had waaaaaay too many problems to even list, for starters, the hair was coming out extremely bright, Second, ENB liked to break it and third It wasn't even as good as I wanted it to be. 

 

I did leave some of the nif work I did in the 911 hair, but I'll have to dig for the material files. 

 

BGEM is not designed for hair/clothing and it'll have numerous issues. I would recommend not touching it at all. 

 

Ya, I try BGEM because BGSM + Alpha Blending simply don't work but BGEM itself has many problems when used as hair material.

 

The hair I'm editing is the one in the Marie Rose Race mod. Bits and pieces of the hair look abruptly cut off because the textures call for gradually decreasing opacity.

I think at this point I'm better off editing the textures itself.

 

 

13 hours ago, South8028 said:

I do not know if I understand the situation correctly, so I apologize if I did not understand correctly.

A mesh with bsEffectFx material may disappear when you try to mix it with another same material or bgsm with a fine alpha mesh, or an altered alpha channel. I was trying to put an animated mesh with bgem inside another mesh with bgem. After a minute, he disappeared, and he could only be seen from above, or under certain lighting conditions at a certain angle. Then I replaced the material of the animated mesh with the usual bsLightingFx with an alpha channel (I needed a color music effect, those are imitation of transparent lights inside the glass). There were no more problems. Generally. A mesh with bgem disappears through another bgem, or bgsm with an alpha channel, but a bgsm mesh with an alpha channel does not disappear through a mesh with bgem.

 

Sorry, I'm not trying to mix multiple materials or meshes.

 

I have a hair mesh and I want to enable alpha blending on it.

It was originally linked to a BGSM file but when enable Alpha Blending on the BGSM file, the mesh won't show up in-game.

So I try linking it to a BGEM file and enable Alpha Blending on it. This time, it does Alpha Blend but it won't receive shadows. It was at 100% brightness all the time.

[South8028]

6 hours ago, jevexok759 said:

 

Sorry, I'm not trying to mix multiple materials or meshes.

 

I have a hair mesh and I want to enable alpha blending on it.

It was originally linked to a BGSM file but when enable Alpha Blending on the BGSM file, the mesh won't show up in-game.

So I try linking it to a BGEM file and enable Alpha Blending on it. This time, it does Alpha Blend but it won't receive shadows. It was at 100% brightness all the time.

Yeah. I just thought I misunderstood. I have never dealt with hair. But good luck, because most of the hair in the game doesn't really look like hair. It is probably worth experimenting with materials and their settings in max. As for textures in fo4, in a strange way, for all vanilla, the formats used are both nvidea and intel. For all D, nvidea is used, for all N, S - intel. I don't remember now (at work), but if necessary, I have a texture entry for all objects in the game. Which are used for the body, which are used for the face, hair, and statics and everything else. 

Edited June 11, 2021 by South8028