Removing Boob Shadows

[shadowforce04]

Does anyone know how to remove the underboob shadows on a character? When i try to make a character with smaller boobs there's this massive shadow that covers them...

[anjenthedog]

Breast shadow is often (?always?) painted into the diffuse maps (the visual "skin". ie, femalebody_1.dds). While I suppose one could theoretical undo that paint action in photoshop/etc (a labor of love I'd think), imo, the best solution (in many/most cases) is to use a texture that doesn't include them in the first place, For shadowlessness, that'd probably be using one of the "flat" types (ie flat breasted types), since diminutive breasts cast little shadow, if any.

 

Diamond and Leyenda both have flat options, not sure if others do but ?probably?

 

Edited December 25, 2023 by anjenthedog
more blather ftw!

[traison]

In addition to what @anjenthedog another way to get fake shadows is with the normal map. Kind of have to hope the shadow is painted into the diffuse texture, because editing the msn texture is considerably more difficult. If you can't find a tool dedicated to editing normal maps (one that supports the encoding used in Skyrim), the DIY approach is to do it with Gimp. The key, as I recall it, is to split all color channels before editing. However, at no point must you forget that what you're editing is essentially encoded unit vectors: X = red channel, Y = green channel etc. (or some variation of this). So simply taking a brush and paining the shadow away probably isn't going to work, or produce the result you expect. So how do you paint then you ask? Find another normal map (or another part of the current normal map) and copy-paste already existing pixels over the problem area. Still easier said than done.

[anjenthedog]

Indeed that seems to play an important part as well. But even with the normals maps, there's only so much you can do about the two smudges spatter-painted onto a huge number of diffuse maps to accentuate the C and above sized breasts that many of the early "skin" authors apparently presumed users would want.

 

Maybe I should have said the "best" solution is a combo of replacing normals maps (_msn.dds) with ones more attuned to breasts that have little or no shadows (flat or trim profiles) AND swapping its diffuse maps with ones designed for small breasts.

 

 

PS> I've performed repaints on excessive numbers of images over the years. I don't recommend it except perhaps as a mental exercise. Very tedious imo/ime, unless, as you suggested, you can find the original source that doesn't include the shadow itself and allows you to copypaste identical details onto your shadowed version. Oh: PS> imo, Photoshop excels at this task, although again, it's still tedious in general

 

And fwiw, each of these stacked images is just a simple single-layer image. Nothing particularly special except in their naming conventions (for internal skyrim parsing), file types, and the purposes of each layer (ok, as well as the separations between embedded body elements, ie, body feet, vag all in the femalebody_1 files)

Edited December 25, 2023 by anjenthedog
correction

[shadowforce04]

Thanks for all the help you guys. I just found a skin someone already removed the shadowmaps on so it's working well enough for me now. 

[housewalker123]

On 12/26/2023 at 8:29 AM, shadowforce04 said:

Thanks for all the help you guys. I just found a skin someone already removed the shadowmaps on so it's working well enough for me now. 

what skin did you use?