Black outline around schlong mesh

[donnerwetter]

Can anyone enlighten me as to what's going on here? At a certain distance, a black outline appears around the edges of the schlong and I don't understand why. The textures and bodyslide preset match and everything looks seamless up close. I'm inclined to think it's some kind of rendering problem- I first suspected an ENB effect was causing it, but turning them off altogether makes no difference. For what it's worth, the outline disappears when you remove the schlong's diffuse textures.

 

 

 

 

[Andy14]

14 hours ago, donnerwetter said:

Can anyone enlighten me as to what's going on here? At a certain distance, a black outline appears around the edges of the schlong and I don't understand why. The textures and bodyslide preset match and everything looks seamless up close. I'm inclined to think it's some kind of rendering problem- I first suspected an ENB effect was causing it, but turning them off altogether makes no difference. For what it's worth, the outline disappears when you remove the schlong's diffuse textures.

I would say the textures (diffuse, normal etc) have too little margin. If the distance is greater, the mipmap is used, which has much less margin.
You can check and even edit it in Nifskope.

To do this, open the Nif in Nifskope -> select Mesh -> right click -> Textures-> Edit UV.
The textured area should go at least 4px to 6px (with 1024px texture - 16px margin is actually standard) beyond the UV border.

If it is less, you can use the UV editor in Nifskope to move the edge of the UV a little or to scale the UV a little.

The changes are displayed immediately.

The changes to the UV are only saved when the Nif is saved - so don't worry about editing.
If you want to do that, then of course with the Nif from Bodyslide.

[donnerwetter]

51 minutes ago, Andy14 said:

I would say the textures (diffuse, normal etc) have too little margin. If the distance is greater, the mipmap is used, which has much less margin.
You can check and even edit it in Nifskope.

To do this, open the Nif in Nifskope -> select Mesh -> right click -> Textures-> Edit UV.
The textured area should go at least 4px to 6px (with 1024px texture) beyond the UV border.

If it is less, you can use the UV editor in Nifskope to move the edge of the UV a little or to scale the UV a little.

The changes are displayed immediately.

The changes to the UV are only saved when the Nif is saved - so don't worry about editing.
If you want to do that, then of course with the Nif from Bodyslide.

 

So the UV map looks like this and the margin certainly seems pretty thin:

 

 

 

The black area is meant to be transparent in-game and shows up as such when looking at the DDS in an image editor, but is borked on my end (presumably a casualty of the backporting process). Would you recommend shrinking the UV or colouring in the transparent area?

 

Edit: Ended up doing the latter for both the diffuse and normal maps, and it looks like the seam is gone!

[Andy14]

20 minutes ago, donnerwetter said:

 

So the UV map looks like this and the margin certainly seems pretty thin:

 

 

 

The black area is meant to be transparent in-game and shows up as such when looking at the DDS in an image editor, but is borked on my end (presumably a casualty of the backporting process). Would you recommend shrinking the UV or colouring in the transparent area?

 

Alpha only works if the Mesh in the Nif (NiTriShape) also uses an Alpha property. Otherwise Alpha will only become black.
So you can add the Alpha Property (in Nifskope). Right click on the NiTrishape -> Node -> Attach Property -> Alpha Property.

However, coloring the black (alpha) areas of the texture with a skin tone would be the simplest solution. But, that may not be enough, because the normal map is not fixed with it. You would have to test it.

 

So yes, I would actually scale the UV a little smaller. Maybe not too much.
If you create a backup of the Nif, nothing bad can happen.

[donnerwetter]

8 minutes ago, Andy14 said:

 

Alpha only works if the Mesh in the Nif (NiTriShape) also uses an Alpha property. Otherwise Alpha will only become black.
So you can add the Alpha Property (in Nifskope). Right click on the NiTrishape -> Node -> Attach Property -> Alpha Property.

However, coloring the black (alpha) areas of the texture with a skin tone would be the simplest solution. But, that may not be enough, because the normal map is not fixed with it. You would have to test it.

 

So yes, I would actually scale the UV a little smaller. Maybe not too much.
If you create a backup of the Nif, nothing bad can happen.

 

The normal map had the same transparency as well- when I first tried just colouring in the diffuse with a flesh tone the black colour was gone but I still had a shiny shimmery outline- filling in the empty space on the normal map with a blue colour fixed it.

[Andy14]

7 minutes ago, donnerwetter said:

 

The normal map had the same transparency as well- when I first tried just colouring in the diffuse with a flesh tone the black colour was gone but I still had a shiny shimmery outline- filling in the empty space on the normal map with a blue colour fixed it.

Das hatte ich vermutet.

Hauptsache, es hat funktioniert

 

The main thing is that it worked.

 

[donnerwetter]

6 minutes ago, Andy14 said:

Das hatte ich vermutet.

Hauptsache, es hat funktioniert

 

The main thing is that it worked.

 

 

I'd been trying to hide the seam by playing with Bodyslide sliders and moving the mesh to hide the outline inside the body for months, but that only created its own problems ?

 

I'm baffled by how there's never been any mention of this issue before considering how popular this particular schlong is, you'd think someone would've run into it by now. Maybe Special Edition renders things differently ?‍♂️

[Andy14]

2 hours ago, donnerwetter said:

 

I'd been trying to hide the seam by playing with Bodyslide sliders and moving the mesh to hide the outline inside the body for months, but that only created its own problems ?

 

I'm baffled by how there's never been any mention of this issue before considering how popular this particular schlong is, you'd think someone would've run into it by now. Maybe Special Edition renders things differently ?‍♂️

 

I am sure that I already wrote the solution in another thread.

But because nobody marks their questions in Tech Support as [Solved], the same questions are asked over and over again.