Lip Gloss Effect for SE?

[ArgyleSmith]

Okay, I know it's not perfectly lore-friendly except for the fact that it's solidly in line with 1970s-1980s sword-and-sorcery film lore.

I switched from Vortex to MO2. Most stuff has gone smoothly. with a number of improvements over what I was getting from essentially the same mods on Vortex (even just relying on LOOT for load order). But there's one big exception: the lip gloss effect.

With Vortex, even when Slavetats was failing to show shine on the lips, I could achieve a satisfactory lip gloss effect with Joseph Anthony's mod from Nexus (LE). I put it late in the load order and the effect is nearly always present.

Not so fast, says, MO2: "That mod has no valid game data!" Right, not an actual quotation, but that's the essence of it. Okay, so I try converting it to SE. Seems to work, at least in that it accepts the folder structure and the missing game data message disappears. But there's no sign of the effect in-game. The Slavetats shiny option hasn't worked ever since the move to MO2.

Overlay numbers? Upped those in two different spots--added the SKEE ini to the game folder because willing to risk one change like that to achieve the effect. But no go. Didn't work. That was likewise changed in the Racemenu mod folder.

There's no Joseph Anthony's plugin, so there's no option of moving it to the end of the plugin load order. Tried having Joseph Anthony's at the top of the priority list in the left pane. That didn't work either.

What's the/a solution?

Supposedly Slavetats has a bug that may prevent the shine effect. I have no idea if I'm getting that or the alternatives just aren't working (not to rule neither working).

Using 1.5.97 fwiw.

Thanks for any help LL folks can offer.

[PandaIGuess]

M'kay so, the lip gloss mod is just a specular face texture. It needs to overwrite literally anything that touches the female head specular, which is basically every skin mod, so make sure it's winning every conflict. MO2 doesn't recognize it as a mod because the folder structure's a bit wacky. You want to set the data folder in the mod as the data directory so MO2 knows what to do with the mod. You can do this by right clicking the mod's data folder and selecting "Set as <data> directory" during the initial install warning.

[ArgyleSmith]

9 hours ago, PandaIGuess said:

M'kay so, the lip gloss mod is just a specular face texture. It needs to overwrite literally anything that touches the female head specular, which is basically every skin mod, so make sure it's winning every conflict. MO2 doesn't recognize it as a mod because the folder structure's a bit wacky. You want to set the data folder in the mod as the data directory so MO2 knows what to do with the mod. You can do this by right clicking the mod's data folder and selecting "Set as <data> directory" during the initial install warning.

I tried this fix without success. I worked under the assumption that installing the LE version of Joseph Anthony's mod was the way to go (setting the data as directory). All matte, all the time, still. The mod shows in MO2 with a no valid game data marker on it.

I may well have proceeded under assumptions that no experienced modder should make. It's tough to overestimate my noobishness.

Edit to add: Lest I forget, my thanks for you taking the time to offer a helpful suggestion.

Edited December 5, 2024 by ArgyleSmith

[ArgyleSmith]

6 hours ago, 1whirled said:

 

 

To add to this, if using Wet Function Redux, it will supplant the spec maps real time effectively overwriting any specular map on everyone in the game.  That can be disabled in the MCM, with the important note that specular map mismatches are jarring visually though.

 

Better option is to blend the glossy lip specular into whatever other spec maps you may have in game.

Oh!

Well, I don't use Wet Function Redux but I do use Soaking Wet which presumably works similarly. I'll try testing that by disabling SW to see what happens.

If it comes to that, how does one blend the glossy lip specular into whatever other spec maps I may have in game? 

Thanks for the guidance.

Update: I tried disabling Soaking Wet, with no apparent difference as a result.

Edited December 5, 2024 by ArgyleSmith

[PandaIGuess]

7 hours ago, ArgyleSmith said:

I tried this fix without success. I worked under the assumption that installing the LE version of Joseph Anthony's mod was the way to go (setting the data as directory). All matte, all the time, still. The mod shows in MO2 with a no valid game data marker on it.

I may well have proceeded under assumptions that no experienced modder should make. It's tough to overestimate my noobishness.

Edit to add: Lest I forget, my thanks for you taking the time to offer a helpful suggestion.

That's pretty odd. The issue with the "no valid game data" thing is that basically, if the data directory isn't set up properly MO2 will just place the file somewhere where it won't actually get loaded into Skyrim. So the texture literally needs to be in exactly textures > actors > character > female to load into Skyrim. Do you have any mods like Racial Skin Variance installed? That's the only mod I can think of that might actually change where the location or name of the specular face texture would be. I had no idea Wet Function Redux did that (I haven't used it in years haha) but yeah sounds like it can 100% overwrite your face specular. It shouldn't really matter if you're loading a texture made for LE into SE, the deal with that is LE used a different compression format than SE, but like it should still load it just fine.

The issue right now is that it's not being loaded in your game, which means it's either in the wrong folder (If you selected the mod's data directory it's not), named incorrectly (It's not), or it's being overwritten (This is probably what's going on lmao). Until we can find out what exactly's overwriting it (It's probably a mod like RSV or Wet Function Redux that we just haven't listed yet lmao) you can hopefully just place the lipgloss texture mod at the very bottom of your modlist, that'll make it to overwrite literally every texture for female face specular you have installed.

Regarding blending the lipgloss specular into another specular map, the process is fairly simple. You basically just need an image editor capable of opening DDS texture files, so either GIMP (with the DDS plugin) or Paint.net will work. You'll also optimally want to pick up Nvidia Texture Tools (for Nvidia graphics cards) or Compressonator (for AMD cards), they're probably the most common DDS exporters people use. If you're using Paint.net it's DDS export functions are actually pretty ok, so if you're not super picky you can just use that.

The main thing you need to do is import whatever specular face texture your main skin mod (Fair Skin Complexion, BNP, Lovergirl, etc etc). MO2's great because you can literally just right click on a mod in your modlist and select "Open in Explorer" to super quickly navigate to the mod's files. You're looking for the file named Femalehead_s.dds, it's going to have the exact same name as the texture in the lip gloss mod. You basically just need to import your main specular head texture into whatever image editor you picked, and import the lip gloss texture on a layer above it. You don't need to touch the main specular at all, all you need to do is erase the bits of the lipgloss texture you don't need. When you're using your DDS exporter (NVidia Texture Tools, Compressonator, Paint.net, etc.) you want to make sure you're using BC7 compression, that's the new format for SE. After that you can just overwrite or replace your specular head texture with the one you made.

Edited December 5, 2024 by PandaIGuess

[ArgyleSmith]

22 hours ago, PandaIGuess said:

That's pretty odd.

Thankfully, it was odd because I apparently failed to properly implement the fix you suggested.

The alternate fixes you suggested above were daunting enough for me to try the first fix again. Worked like a charm on the second attempt. I think I mistook the "<data>" tag for the data folder the first time I tried the fix. Applying the fix to the data folder solved the problem.

Many thanks! I hope this thread may help others who suffered the same problem.