Getting Gloss with Nifskope

[darkshot64]

So I've recently decided to try to add some extra gloss via nifskope because I wanted to sporty sexy sweat mod I'm using to look a bit better.

However I have no idea where to start. I have nifskope but I don't know what to do after that.

Do I load in the body texture? I've tried that but could not find the file. Do I need some sort of plugin?

I imagine navigating to find the values for the gloss should not be too hard after that.
 

[psammeticus]

Open the body mesh (femalebody_1.nif) and click on the BSLightingShaderProperty. In the bottom section there will be an entry for glossiness. Make sure you change both meshes to match (the _0 and _1). There's a tutorial for it around here somewhere. If I find it I'll post a link.

[darkshot64]

Thank you for your help.

I'm having trouble figuring out how these values work. When I was using the "sport sweat" increasing the gloss value made them sweat disappear, lowering it made it appear much more, almost looked like my character was covered in milk.

I took off the sweat and am just using the default CBBE texture and now I am not noticing any changes when messing with the values. I'm am using a range of 1-99 for the values.

In addition to the "femalebody_0" and "femalebody_1" files I see files labled "femalebody_0 - Copia" and "femalebody_1 - Copia." I'm not sure what those are so I'm not going to touch 'em.

[darkshot64]

I started with the Value at 1. No gloss.

 

Set it to 99. Noticed slight possible change.

Set to 1000. Noticed a shine.

Set to 1000000. No shine at all.

I'm very confused on how this works. Even at 1000 the shine was very subtle. And I suppose there is some sort of value limit. Does my ENB have anything to do with how noticeable my shine is?

[psammeticus]

It's also going to depend on the specular texture (*_s.dds) as well. I've been playing around with this one  http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38119/ because I liked the eveness of it. I don't know the value range and I don't really remember what values worked for me. It was just something I was screwing around with when I was bored a few months ago. The body meshes with the "-Copia" are just copies (good to have them backed up). The ENB will definitely impact the glossiness. My knowledge on ENBs is quite outdated, but there should be a setting for glossiness, either in the ini or in-game settings. This might help as well: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38293/.

 

I would recommend checking out this post http://www.loverslab.com/topic/21438-illustrated-tips-guidelines-making-beautiful-female-characters/ if you haven't seen it. Near the bottom of the OP is a good explanation of textures.

[darkshot64]

Thank you very much.

[psammeticus]

This was something that drove me crazy because I was trying to get a decent wet look without plasticness. In the end I settled with the specular I linked above. But I'm never truly satisfied with any of my textures and am always looking to improve them.

[darkshot64]

At the end of the day I ended up going with the  "0_CBBE Oily Skin.rar" that was posted in this thread. It's pretty nice. http://www.loverslab.com/topic/4638-the-best-oily-skin-mod/

 

At least now I can mess with it via nifskope.