Skin - excessive response to light

[anjenthedog]

Ok, not sure if I'm going to be able to say this right, but here goes

 

The "skin" on a follower of mine (one whose basic appearance - face - I've cloned using CCA)  is highly responsive to any light source.

And hopefully not surprising to anyone, I want to tone that response down. 

 

Presuming we're on the same page so far, which file (specific extension please) and or nif variable(s) do I need to change to affect this issue?

 

thanks

Edited June 17, 2022 by anjenthedog

[jesseg]

You could try adjusting the specular and glossiness settings in the nif or comparing the nif to another follower mod that doesn't have the issue...

 

 

the nif should be located in a similar folder structure : Meshes\actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom\FollowerName.esp\randomnumbers.nif

An image of the issue would help to narrow down the cause....

Edited June 17, 2022 by jesseg

[anjenthedog]

Thanks for the reply

 

My numbers are identical to the ones your posted, so if those are normal, then maybe the nif file possibility isn't the problem.

 

How about  glossiness/reflectivity/etc and textures?  - anyone, not trying to make you my spoon-feeder

 

Edited June 17, 2022 by anjenthedog

[yorpers]

Would be nice to see a screenshot of it. It could be anything from the enb settings you use to the specific skin diffuse "femalebody_1.dds" and "femalehead.dds" being extremely pale by default and exacerbated by a whole host of other things. It could even be the specular maps are too bright.

[anjenthedog]

I'll upload a couple/few later on when/after I play. Yes, she IS pale. Not bone-white, but pale. The trick for snapshots is getting her in the right area for the shot. Blue sky + locations like Whiterun or Riften really screw with her, but so do a ton of places in the wild. And she has this natural "shimmer", very subdued but "there" even when not in bright light, which might be of some wroth too. (if I can capture the shimmer. My images are limited to screen res, so things have a way of getting incidentally blurred)

 

 

3 hours ago, yorpers said:

It could even be the specular maps are too bright.

 

This is what I'm suspecting, possibly exacerbated by her natural skin tone. 

 

I can edit the regular skin .dds file (WYSIWYG) without issue using Paint dot Net, but I have no idea how to deal with the specular map .dds file to adjust its response if that's needed.

 

Edited June 17, 2022 by anjenthedog

[yorpers]

13 minutes ago, anjenthedog said:

I can edit the regular skin .dds file (WYSIWYG) without issue using Paint dot Net, but I have no idea how to deal with the specular map .dds file to adjust its response if that's needed.

 I highly doubt that is the problem unless someone really REALLY messed up their specular map somehow. They are all almost the same relative brightness from any skin mod that I have used over the years from diamond to bijin.  They should all look somewhat similar to the attached clip below with varying levels of detail.

Spoiler

 

 

25 minutes ago, anjenthedog said:

I'll upload a couple/few later on when/after I play. Yes, she IS pale. Not bone-white, but pale. The trick for snapshots is getting her in the right area for the shot. Blue sky + locations like Whiterun or Riften really screw with her, but so do a ton of places in the wild. And she has this natural "shimmer", very subdued but "there" even when not in bright light, which might be of some wroth too. (if I can capture the shimmer. My images are limited to screen res, so things have a way of getting incidentally blurred)

 

Honestly I am assuming it is probably subsurface scattering bronze shine bug mixed with some enb settings mixed with a generally pale character mixed with who knows what else. Judging from this description it sounds a lot like what can happen with femalebody_1_sk.dds (and all the other related sk.dds) having bad reactions to light.

 

If that is the case you may need to use blank black panes for the subsurface skin files. They are available as an option in most skin mods because of this exact problem. I have also been using some very different subsurface files from I think Reverie skin that seem to play good with lighting. They are black and white instead of the usual shades of red.

 

[anjenthedog]

1 hour ago, yorpers said:

 I highly doubt that is the problem unless someone really REALLY messed up their specular map somehow.

It's quite possible. I think I remember it being like this right from download of the original follower mod, ~3 years ago, and even then it was a port from an older LE mod.  Or maybe my hack conversion to BHUNP caused it (although I didn't touch her textures or her overall mesh particulars. I was careful to  recraft as close to the original images in her "shape", and leave the textures intact, because that's really what defines her look sorta an English/Roma mix. ). It just wasn't as important to fix or address before, because her skin was her skin, and I only saw it when I was looking at her, and it was exhibiting, but on this player vector, and when in third person (my main view) her skin is my skin, and I see it all the time, or at least enough to make it annoying.

 (imaging it is another matter. My snapshots often turn out way more muted than in game.)

 

Not going to be able to play tonight, I'll try to get sample images up tomorrow. 

 

Now that I thin of it, I'm going to check my Imaginator settings too. It could be something off in my "color controls" settings. It's like gamma is set too high, but gamma doesn't enter into the game, does it? 

 

Anyway. I'll drop a few pics in tomorrow

Edited June 18, 2022 by anjenthedog

[anjenthedog]

As promised., These aren't "the worst" but they're illustrative

This first image shows a reasonable example of the weird shimmery effect on the skin. I suspect it's this "layer" that's causing issues. It's not evident in either femalebody_0.dds or femalebody_1.dds, so it has to be something else.

 

This is mild in comparison to Whiterun or some other places under full sun

 

same location just with player facing away from sun

 

---

 

Oh, and PS> I checked and my Imaginator color/brightness/etc settings were all flat, so that's off the table. If "gamma" is set too high, it's just on the player body, not the world at large.

Edited June 18, 2022 by anjenthedog

[Fotogen]

First picture. I think thats called "bronze shine". Lots of hits if you google it. Dunno which solution would be best for you (as its visual, "beauty is in the eye..." rule applies).

[yorpers]

Yeah femalebody_1_sk.dds and the other _sk.dds files look like the culprit. Try replacing them with optional blank detail ones from a skin mod and see if that fixes it.

Edited June 18, 2022 by yorpers

[anjenthedog]

5 hours ago, yorpers said:

Yeah femalebody_1_sk.dds and the other _sk.dds files look like the culprit. Try replacing them with optional blank detail ones from a skin mod and see if that fixes it.

Cool. that seems to have solved the shimmering effect. Thanks!

 

But her skin still glows like a lightbulb when in full sun, as well as anything else that she's wearing, that has light tones (washed out to white, or close to white), so I still need figure out how to tame/tone-down that one. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the "_s" files, but like I said earlier, I don't know how they work. 

 

But this is a good start.  The shimmery Moire-like thing has been annoying me since the first time I saw it. 

Edited June 18, 2022 by anjenthedog

[yorpers]

8 minutes ago, anjenthedog said:

Cool. that seems to have solved the shimmering effect. Thanks!

 

But her skin still glows like a lightbulb when in full sun, as well as anything else that she's wearing, that has light tones (washed out to white, or close to white), so I still need figure out how to tame/tone-down that one. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the "_s" files, but like I said earlier, I don't know how they work. 

 

But this is a good start.  The shimmery Moire-like thing has been annoying me since the first time I saw it. 

Good news that one of the problems was fixed at least. As far as editing specular maps goes I don't suggest trying to edit them without getting help from someone that knows more about texture blending than I do. Editing them can easily cause neck and hand seams. It should be safe, however, to try and replace them with one from another skin mod. Skin mods like diamond have multiple options than you can just drag and drop. 

 

I can't tell by your screenshots if you use enb or reshade, and I have never used imaginator so I don't know what all it can do; but this looks more like something bloom related than a janky specular map to me. No harm in making a backup of your _s files and trying some others out though.

[anjenthedog]

re: specular maps, yeah, my concern as well. I'm hesitant to drop and replace but might try it. I'd really like to get a handle on how to tune my own rather than just replace.

 

I have a few random environmental mods installed that have altered the vanilla **lighting (if that's what you mean by reshade), but no, not the ENB package.

 

These are the only ones that stand out

 

Vivid Landscapes

Realistic Water II

Dynamic Volumetric Lighting and Sun Shadows

Lanterns of Skyrim ( I think this one had some incidental environmental adder in the fomod, but not sure any more)

 

Edited June 19, 2022 by anjenthedog
** thought a word but forgot to type it

[yorpers]

2 hours ago, anjenthedog said:

(if that's what you mean by reshade)

reshade is its own shader program kind of like ENB. (lots of differences with how the two work but that is kind of irrelevant to your thread here) 

 

2 hours ago, anjenthedog said:

These are the only ones that stand out

 

Vivid Landscapes

Realistic Water II

Dynamic Volumetric Lighting and Sun Shadows

Lanterns of Skyrim ( I think this one had some incidental environmental adder in the fomod, but not sure any more)

Okay, yeah none of these should even remotely effect weather or lighting effects in the way that is the problem you are having.

 

2 hours ago, anjenthedog said:

specular maps, yeah, my concern as well. I'm hesitant to drop and replace but might try it. I'd really like to get a handle on how to tune my own rather than just replace.

Trial and error is never a bad thing if you have a backup. 

 

I'm not sure I can be of much further help, I haven't used Skyrim without a weather or lighting overhaul since probably 2016 so I don't actually remember how vanilla settings and .ini changes effect skin. I'd rather not lead you on a chase like that

 

Best of luck, at least we got the shimmering problem fixed.

[anjenthedog]

Thanks for all your help yorpers. Far more than I've received elsewhere over the last couple years trying to solve it. And you simply killed my 
shimmer" problem, all while indirectly  teaching me a couple of things I didn't "grok" before about texture files (I already knew a few pat, one-line definitions, but didn't really get it).  Way more than I expected.  I ever intended you to hold my hand through it, but I'm grateful you did.

 

The last part I can figure out on my own, now that the overlap "shimmer" issue isn't in the way.

 

So you helped and helped a lot. Much appreciated. First real progress in 3 years and six overt attempts to get this resolved

 

[anjenthedog]

BTW, for anyone reading this thread ever wonders about this stuff, or has had similar issues or whatever, I just found this interesting comment in an article when I was looking for info on how to (properly)  edit specular maps. See the underlined portion for the cliff hanger. 

 

Quote

Specular maps controls how much light is reflected from a surface. Not every texture needs to be shiny such as wood. Also, the specular map can also be stored in the alpha channel of certain normal maps.

Also... I saw this in another thread

Quote

Specular map is the File with the "_s.dss" ending irc. It is just in greyscales white is glowing and black is not glowing.

which, if true, makes it nothing more than a simple mask, limited only by clipping the low end (potentially pixelating or granularizing 'reflection-edge' features) if you lower the brightness too much. Time to experiment.

 

fwiw...

 

back to the hunt.

Edited June 19, 2022 by anjenthedog

[deltavega]

On 6/19/2022 at 8:03 PM, anjenthedog said:

 

back to the hunt.

 

 

Hello, sorry for digging that subject.

 

Did you find a solution for that body response to light ? I've been searching for days, even erased my mod list and Enb to find the guilty one.

 

On my side it only appears when I use all body textures and when the character faces a light source like the sun, no problem with vanilla texture.

 

 

Edited April 13 by deltavega

[traison]

16 minutes ago, deltavega said:

On my side it only appears when I use all body textures and when the character faces a light source like the sun

 

Well the screenshot you posted looks like how I remember vanilla Skyrim SE looking. It had desaturation, blur, eye adaption and bloom turned up to 11. Tint, contrast and brightness were all over the place as well. The first thing I did before purchasing the game was make sure these could all be removed/adjusted. Desaturation, eye adaption, brightness, tint, contrast and bloom are built into every single IMOD, so I made an xEdit script to get rid of that. Blur is hidden in one of the Skyrim ini files.

 

22 minutes ago, deltavega said:

erased my mod list and Enb

 

Character lighting which I believe was inherited from Fallout 4 with the engine swap that came with Skyrim SE is another thing that makes characters glow in the dark. ENB calls it "fake lights" and has a toggle for it. The game itself has a console command to temporarily toggle it off: "cl off". Removing ENB probably made the problem worse.

 

25 minutes ago, deltavega said:

no problem with vanilla texture

 

So this would indicate that the issue is with the replacements right? Why not try replacing the current _sk, _s and _msn body textures one at a time with the vanilla ones until the problem goes away? If by skin you mean the actual body mesh then my only recommendation is to open the vanilla body and normalize all specularity, glossiness, vertex color, tint and whatever else color or reflection/refraction related you can find in the meshes. NifSkope can do this easily.

 

Earlier in this thread someone posted images of the age-old bronze shine issue we had back in LE. That, I recall was because back then people encoded _sk textures incorrectly.

[deltavega]

 

41 minutes ago, traison said:

Well the screenshot you posted looks like how I remember vanilla Skyrim SE looking. It had desaturation, blur, eye adaption and bloom turned up to 11. Tint, contrast and brightness were all over the place as well. The first thing I did before purchasing the game was make sure these could all be removed/adjusted. Desaturation, eye adaption, brightness, tint, contrast and bloom are built into every single IMOD, so I made an xEdit script to get rid of that. Blur is hidden in one of the Skyrim ini files.

 

Should I modify all that ?

 

41 minutes ago, traison said:

Character lighting which I believe was inherited from Fallout 4 with the engine swap that came with Skyrim SE is another thing that makes characters glow in the dark. ENB calls it "fake lights" and has a toggle for it. The game itself has a console command to temporarily toggle it off: "cl off". Removing ENB probably made the problem worse.

 

I have the same problem with or without Enb. I dont remember which one but at a time an Enb preset solved the problem, my computer couldn't handle that preset sadly.

Maybe I should reinstall the game in case some ini files are modified ?

 

41 minutes ago, traison said:

So this would indicate that the issue is with the replacements right? Why not try replacing the current _sk, _s and _msn body textures one at a time with the vanilla ones until the problem goes away? If by skin you mean the actual body mesh then my only recommendation is to open the vanilla body and normalize all specularity, glossiness, vertex color, tint and whatever else color or reflection/refraction related you can find in the meshes. NifSkope can do this easily.

 

Earlier in this thread someone posted images of the age-old bronze shine issue we had back in LE. That, I recall was because back then people encoded _sk textures incorrectly.

 

 

I think I understand what you mean but I don't really know how to do it. 

 

A while ago I installed a plugin for Mo2 that let me preview the textures and models in mods.

 

For instance, in tempered skin for females I have a mesh and texture folder (it's supposed to replace only textures), if I go in textures/actor/character/female I see some files and if I'm not wrong with the folder the ones concerned by Isolda who is Nordic are femalebody_1*.dds and femalehead_1*.dds.

Femalebody_1.dds seems to be the base texture

Femalebody_1_msn.dds has some kind of rainbow coloured texture (maybe this one is for reflection of light ?)

Femalebody_1_s.dds is a black square

Femalebody_1_sk.dds is the same as first one but really dark

 

 

Edited April 13 by deltavega

[traison]

9 minutes ago, deltavega said:

Should I modify all that ?

 

Depends on what you want out of your Skyrim. Modding can be a decade long process. My approach was to get a decently looking baseline, instead of doing something like adding ReShade to improve the image afterwards. Why blur the image first only to then sharpen it again? I'd much rather just remove the blur. This obviously then creates another problem where practically any ENB, lighting or weather preset I download their adjustments will be all over the place - they're made for that desaturated tinted blurry bloomy mess that is vanilla Skyrim SE. These I have to adjust or make myself to get good results.

 

13 minutes ago, deltavega said:

Maybe I should reinstall the game in case some ini files are modified ?

 

Simply deleting the ini files is enough. Keep backups however, as the ones that get remade will most likely be vastly different.

 

15 minutes ago, deltavega said:

Femalebody_1.dds seems to be the base texture

Femalebody_1_msn.dds has some kind of rainbow coloured texture (maybe this one is for reflection of light ?)

Femalebody_1_s.dds is a black square

Femalebody_1_sk.dds is the same as first one but really dark

 

femalebody_1.dds - Index 0, Diffuse. The actual colors that make up the skin of a mesh.

femalebody_1_msn.dds - Index 1, Normal map. Vector3 data encoded as RGB color channels. Practically impossible to edit in traditional 2D paint programs.

femalebody_1_s.dds - Index 7, Backlight or specular mask.

femalebody_1_sk.dds - Index 2, Environment mask or subsurface scattering.

 

The _s and _sk textures you can reduce the intensity off simply by dropping the brightness of the entire picture.

 

19 minutes ago, deltavega said:

I think I understand what you mean but I don't really know how to do it.

 

Start by querying your mod manager for which mod provides the dds files mentioned above. Go through each of these mods and compile the list of conflicts, for instance like so:

 

femalebody_1.dds comes from My Awesome Skin Mod version 1, which replaces 3BA Body Replacer mod version 2.31.

femalebody_1_msn.dds comes from ...

...

 

Make backups of the files in each of these mods then start removing from the top. You probably don't need to care about the diffuse texture, I'd skip that. So:

1. Remove femalebody_1_msn.dds from My Awesome Skin Mod version 1, to instead use the one provided by 3BA Body Replacer mod version 2.31.
2. Test in game.
3. Nothing changed?
4. Remove femalebody_1_msn.dds from 3BA Body Replacer mod version 2.31, to instead use the one from the vanilla file archives.
5. Test in game.
6. Nothing changed?
7. Move on to the next texture.

If replacing none of the textures with vanilla counterparts fixes the issue, then:

1. Again query your mod manager for which mod provides meshes\actors\character\character assets\femalebody_1.nif.
2. Open the mesh in NifSkope.
3. (optional) Open a vanilla body mesh (or another body mesh that does not have this issue) in another NifSkope window.
4. Open each NiTriShape node.
5. Go through it, and all its subnodes and look for anything to do with colors, reflection, specularity, refraction, ...
6. (optional) Compare the values you find to those of the known-good mesh in the other NifSkope window.
7. Adjust the values and test in-game to see results.

[deltavega]

On 4/13/2024 at 1:52 PM, traison said:

 

Depends on what you want out of your Skyrim. Modding can be a decade long process. My approach was to get a decently looking baseline, instead of doing something like a

 

So, I spent hours trying to tweak stuffs, adding light mods, modify textures..... I was discouraged so I advanced next step in my modding list and by adding a weather mod the problem vanished  The ugly gray filter I had outside disappeared too