2 Basic texture questions

[Aki K]

(1) I've been making some custom eye textures. But it seems that no matter how bright I try to make the color etc, it still is hard to see in dark areas. I want to learn how to make the eyes actually glow. Is there a way to do that using GIMP and/or TES5Edit? (I have struggled a lot to learn creation kit. If creation kit is necessary I need you to "explain it like I'm 5."

 

(2) I want to make a skin texture more glossy. I'm using the trouble Skyrim mod and I want my character to look like they're sweating. Until recently I had been using some creative use of Bodyslide and Outfit Studio to achieve this effect, but there are serious flaws to this method

      -Flaw 1: If I ever have to redo my setup,  have to go through every outfit 1 by 1 and reapply the work around for non-nude sweat effect.

      -Flaw 2: Even when the character is "nude" the effect requires equipping it in the armor slot, so NPCs don't treat the character as nude.

[bnub345]

21 hours ago, Aki K said:

(1) I've been making some custom eye textures. But it seems that no matter how bright I try to make the color etc, it still is hard to see in dark areas. I want to learn how to make the eyes actually glow. Is there a way to do that using GIMP and/or TES5Edit? (I have struggled a lot to learn creation kit. If creation kit is necessary I need you to "explain it like I'm 5."

 

I don't know if it's possible to make a texture emit light in Skyrim. Bethesda made things glowy by using the mesh the texture is attached to. If you look at the meshes for vanilla eyes and vampire eyes, you can see a good example. You can edit these meshes using the nifskope program. If you select the eye mesh and click the down arrow, it will show the nodes attached to the eye. One of these is BSLightingShaderProperty; you want to look for Emissive Color and Emissive Multiple in the list. Normal eyes have a black emission with 1.13 strength, while vampire eyes have a white emission with 1.42 strength. This is how vampire eyes glow. 

 

Spoiler

 

 

As for 2, I'm not really sure how this is done. But I think it has to do with the normal/specular maps rather than the diffuse texture. Try to find some glossy body skin texture mods and see how they work.

[Dorabella]

On 8/24/2023 at 10:30 PM, Aki K said:

(2) I want to make a skin texture more glossy.

Something like that ?

 

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Quote

(1) I've been making some custom eye textures. But it seems that no matter how bright I try to make the color etc

 

Try with this cubemap 

 

ENB Dynamic Cubemaps  Need convertion for LE

 

Edited August 25, 2023 by ?????? 1627

[Aki K]

21 hours ago, ?????? 1627 said:

Something like that ?

 

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Try with this cubemap 

 

ENB Dynamic Cubemaps  Need convertion for LE

 

Is there an ENB Dynamic Cubemaps for LE?

 

But yes, the above skin texture effect is what I'm going for. I'm just trying to make an existing skin texture glossier, not create a new one from scratch. I'm under the impression that can be done just with texture editing as my current skin texture install is already somewhat glossy and the files only include .dds files. No nifs, and so I'm assuming the .nifs of the body are unchanged.

 

Additonally, I am concerned about editing .nifs for the body I'm using. I tried to do it once and it nearly broke the bodies to an irretrievable point even though the only changes I made were slight. Suddenly there were hand and neck seams everywhere etc. I just barely managed to save it. (Possibly because I'm using MO, bodyslide, etc.) and I don't know where the correct bodyfiles to alter are located. So I might have been editing the wrong one.

-   For this reason I would prefer to find a way to do this by only editing the skin texture. I know exactly where that file is located because its only the 1 mod, and easily fixed by just reinstalling it.

But maybe I'm just misunderstanding how all this works.

 

 

 

Regarding Eyes:

On 8/25/2023 at 2:01 PM, bnub345 said:

 

I don't know if it's possible to make a texture emit light in Skyrim. Bethesda made things glowy by using the mesh the texture is attached to. If you look at the meshes for vanilla eyes and vampire eyes, you can see a good example. You can edit these meshes using the nifskope program. If you select the eye mesh and click the down arrow, it will show the nodes attached to the eye. One of these is BSLightingShaderProperty; you want to look for Emissive Color and Emissive Multiple in the list. Normal eyes have a black emission with 1.13 strength, while vampire eyes have a white emission with 1.42 strength. This is how vampire eyes glow. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

Would it be possible to create a copy of the normal eye mesh with more emissive colors, and assign only certain eyes to use the copied mesh? I don't want to make all normal eyes glow, just specific ones. 

 

 

[Dorabella]

4 minutes ago, Aki K said:

Is there an ENB Dynamic Cubemaps for LE?

 

Yes  However, this does not prevent him from giving him other jobs

 

6 minutes ago, Aki K said:

But yes, the above skin texture effect is what I'm going for.

I didn't make big variables, I just took a wet effect texture and applied it 2 times replacing the femalebody_sk with femalebody_s

 

 

[Aki K]

4 hours ago, ?????? 1627 said:

Yes  However, this does not prevent him from giving him other jobs

 

I didn't make big variables, I just took a wet effect texture and applied it 2 times replacing the femalebody_sk with femalebody_s

 

 

I'm not sure I understand.

[Dorabella]

7 hours ago, Aki K said:

I'm not sure I understand.

Change with femalebody_s wet effect

 

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Now , this process , involves editing every single nif , which , is what you want to avoid .To remedy this , choose any femalebody_s with wet effect , 

You duplicate it and rename it femalebody_1_sk , and femalebody_1_s copy/drop skyrim data \textures\actors\characterter female

 

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Femalebody_1_s  and femalebody_1_sk with wet 

 

 

 

This will avoid any other changes by effectively making the work global effect . Any female /dress , will have the wet effect applied . Obviously , it should be applied to all parts of the body 

 

The alternative , is to use a mod such as WetFunctionRedux , once set in MCM , it will start by itself at any time it requires a wet effect (running, rain, bath, sex , etc.)

 

 

 

[bnub345]

20 hours ago, Aki K said:

Would it be possible to create a copy of the normal eye mesh with more emissive colors, and assign only certain eyes to use the copied mesh? I don't want to make all normal eyes glow, just specific ones. 

 

Yes, but you need to understand how facegen works with NPCs. Basically every single NPC has a mesh where all of the pieces of the head are put together into a single nif. These are located in a folder like meshes\actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\<esp name>\<base id>. So a vanilla skyrim NPC with a base id of 555 would be in meshes\actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\Skyrim.esm\00000555.nif. Inside this nif, all you need to do is delete the existing eyes branch and then copy your edited eyes in that branch. Or you can simply edit the existing eye mesh and change the emissive values. 

[Andy14]

On 8/24/2023 at 10:30 PM, Aki K said:

I want to make a skin texture more glossy.

 

Changing textures, glossines, etc. is actually quite simple.
Actually - because actually only for the PC.
If you want to change specular for NPC etc., the whole thing will be - not complicated - but time-consuming.

The first and most important thing to remember is how Skyrim is structured.
Each NPC already exists and for each NPC there is already a snapshot of the face (i.e. mesh + texture) - as a nif in FaceGenData.
These Nif (and textures) are exported e.g. from CK using the values set there.

 

The following options for Glossines/Specular adjustments are available to you - if you don't want this adjustment to be only for the PC
I'll list all known options - even the completely stupid ones

 

1. - Editing of the nif shader flags for specular strength, glossiness etc. Complete nonsense because: Must be done for all armor and bodies and for femalehead.nif (also hands and feet) (if only for female) - after that all NPC that use this Femalehead.nif to be re-exported in CK.

 

2. - Editing the textures. Here the Specular.map. This is a doable way - in any case, make a backup of the textures.
Here it is important to change all textures in the same way. So, changing the brightness for the Femalebody_s.dds, the Femalehead_s.dds, etc. equally - body, hands and feet
Things to note with this method: standalone followers and/or additional races. These (textures) would have to be edited as well.

 

3. If it's going to be PC only, then using a mod is like. e.g. WetFunction the easier and safer choice.

[Aki K]

7 hours ago, bnub345 said:

 

Yes, but you need to understand how facegen works with NPCs. Basically every single NPC has a mesh where all of the pieces of the head are put together into a single nif. These are located in a folder like meshes\actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\<esp name>\<base id>. So a vanilla skyrim NPC with a base id of 555 would be in meshes\actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\Skyrim.esm\00000555.nif. Inside this nif, all you need to do is delete the existing eyes branch and then copy your edited eyes in that branch. Or you can simply edit the existing eye mesh and change the emissive values. 

What if I only want to do it for the player character?

[Aki K]

5 hours ago, Andy14 said:

. . . 

 

2. - Editing the textures. Here the Specular.map. This is a doable way - in any case, make a backup of the textures.
Here it is important to change all textures in the same way. So, changing the brightness for the Femalebody_s.dds, the Femalehead_s.dds, etc. equally - body, hands and feet
Things to note with this method: standalone followers and/or additional races. These (textures) would have to be edited as well.

 

3. If it's going to be PC only, then using a mod is like. e.g. WetFunction the easier and safer choice.

For number 2: So its basically just adjusting the brightness of those _s.dds files?

 

for number 3: Where can I find Wetfunction or similar mod for LE?

[Andy14]

5 hours ago, Aki K said:

For number 2: So its basically just adjusting the brightness of those _s.dds files?

 

for number 3: Where can I find Wetfunction or similar mod for LE?

 

2: Yes

3: For example 

or
 

 

Edited August 28, 2023 by Andy14

[bnub345]

On 8/27/2023 at 6:33 PM, Aki K said:

What if I only want to do it for the player character?

 

Well by default the PC uses the same eyes as everyone else of their race/sex. Most races use the standard eyesmale.nif or eyesfemale.nif, I think the khajiit and argonians are different. These are in meshes\actors\character\character assets\. Your installation might not have anything here, unless you use a mod that alters the eye mesh, in which case you can extract the vanilla eye mesh from the Skyrim - Meshes.bsa.

 

If you are not comfortable creating a PC specific race in the CK, I am sure you can find some mod that does so, and just edit that mod's eye meshes. 

[Aki K]

15 hours ago, bnub345 said:

 

Well by default the PC uses the same eyes as everyone else of their race/sex. Most races use the standard eyesmale.nif or eyesfemale.nif, I think the khajiit and argonians are different. These are in meshes\actors\character\character assets\. Your installation might not have anything here, unless you use a mod that alters the eye mesh, in which case you can extract the vanilla eye mesh from the Skyrim - Meshes.bsa.

 

If you are not comfortable creating a PC specific race in the CK, I am sure you can find some mod that does so, and just edit that mod's eye meshes. 

I usually place Succubus Race lite. So it probably does have a separate mesh I can alter. But let me ask this question a different way.

 

Let's say that I have a mod that adds 100 different colored eyes and they all use the vanilla mesh. Can I do the following:

1. Take the vanilla mesh, make a copy, name it something like "glow mesh." And then;

2. Take eye color number 73 and make only eye color 73 use the glow mesh.

 

Such that all other eye colors do not glow, but this particular color does.

[bnub345]

2 hours ago, Aki K said:

Such that all other eye colors do not glow, but this particular color does.

 

Yes but it requires a bit of work to get around. If you make a copy of the succubus race and assign it the glowing eye mesh and only color 73, then effectively you have what you want. But I don't think you can use the original race and only swap eyes for one color. 

[Aki K]

On 8/29/2023 at 2:08 PM, bnub345 said:

 

Yes but it requires a bit of work to get around. If you make a copy of the succubus race and assign it the glowing eye mesh and only color 73, then effectively you have what you want. But I don't think you can use the original race and only swap eyes for one color. 

I will experiment and see if I can come up with something. Maybe there's a way.