[Request] Blushing when aroused

[Fredas]

I submit that the look of a female face (personal preference) when blushing is quite attractive.  As evidence, I offer these screenshots (cluttering the OP to make my point):

 

Credit: Middle shot is from EDialog.  Bottom shot, unknown, but I'd be keen on getting that outfit, even though it clearly doesn't quite fit that body. ;p

 

And now to the idea.  In my opinion, blushing like in the above pictures can serve as a very appealing indicator of arousal or sexual fluster.  So the idea goes like this: If the user has access to two versions of their face texture (or if the mod provides them) - one normal and one with a blush like in the above shots - then the mod would swap in the blush texture whenever the player is aroused or having sex.  The state of "arousal" can be defined by the player or a separate mod in much the same manner as it is done so for Schlongs of Skyrim (in this case I am thinking of the futa version), or simply tied to said mod, in the laziest scenario.

 

Ideally, the texture swap would not be an instantaneous, one-frame process, but would instead gradually fade in (on the order of 10-20 seconds, or user-definable) upon initiation of arousal or sex, and gradually fade out when said variables are turned back off.

 

And just for extra bonus, this idea could be used in an identical fashion to serve much the same purposes for alcohol intoxication, since the look is much the same anyway.

 

Note: It could be that an easier or at least more universal solution would be to create a transparent texture of a blush and superimpose that over whatever face the player uses.  I hesitate to suggest this, however, as I am not convinced that results as great as in the above shots could be achieved this way.

 

I do not have the skill to produce this mod, but it doesn't strike my layman's mind as a particularly daunting undertaking compared to most.  Thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[ash51892]

there is a blush effect in racemenu I believe, or 1 of my mods installed it, I know that sexlab hormones can edit the racemenu to add eyeliner and lip color along with proportions so this show be able to be done, I just have never worked with scripts before otherwise I would make it

[Fredas]

there is a blush effect in racemenu I believe, or 1 of my mods installed it, I know that sexlab hormones can edit the racemenu to add eyeliner and lip color along with proportions so this show be able to be done, I just have never worked with scripts before otherwise I would make it

 

Yeah, I figured this had the potential to be reasonably trivial for an experienced modder.  I think this would be a useful mod to many folks.  Even non-adult scenarios involving drunkenness could benefit.

 

For my own part, I'm going to see what I can do to hunt down the blush faces seen in these shots.  Could be a useful resource for whoever decides to take this idea and run with it.

[Fredas]

I took a moment to investigate how EDialog achieves its blush look, and it turns out that it uses exactly the approach that I wondered about in the OP.  That is, it includes its own transparent blush texture and superimposes that over the faces of NPCs.  The curious part is that it seems to do this by using its own mesh of part of the face.  This really puzzles me because every NPC has a different face, pretty much.  I have to wonder how it doesn't end up looking basically like a mask, or like a red blob is hovering in front of an NPC's face.

 

[canderes]

A ton of games have a plane floating in front of the nose/cheeks. It wouldn't be too hard to add something like that as a jewelry item or something along those lines, but in an unused biped slot. Same would work for a 3d facial. If we could get a translation controller in a nif we could put in moving textures-tears or some immersive sweat. That stuff now looks like it would be similar to the blood spatter effect on armor, and weapons.

[gm207]

out of curiosity, are these female followers in the pics up top? and where do I download them?

[jacques00]

I took a moment to investigate how EDialog achieves its blush look, and it turns out that it uses exactly the approach that I wondered about in the OP.  That is, it includes its own transparent blush texture and superimposes that over the faces of NPCs.  The curious part is that it seems to do this by using its own mesh of part of the face.  This really puzzles me because every NPC has a different face, pretty much.  I have to wonder how it doesn't end up looking basically like a mask, or like a red blob is hovering in front of an NPC's face.

 

I can confirm this as I have used EDialog for a bit through it's upgrades--it has a few glitches and I ended up disabling the blush function because it created weird anomalies with other mods I was using. Some characters with ceratin faces would end up with texture stripes on their faces, so removing the blush feature would get rid of that. Also, the geometry is still persistent even if it's not visible, so when you have a mod that forces shaders on top of the faces (like Cold and Wet--though that mod also has it's own set of anomalies...), you can clearly see the geometry that overlays the face... That piece of geometry probably isn't tagged properly to ignore forced shaders (if that's possible), so maybe having blush be more of an animated/equipped effect than one that is constantly on (only fading in and out on desired points) may be more effective.

 

I have also been testing the SexLab Aroused mod and I can say blushing would be an awesome add-on for showing arousal. There is currently an arousal idle animation add-on for it that does well, but because it's not using scripts, the NPCs that trigger the animation usually trigger it late, and would move around while playing their idles, so it makes them look like they are sliding all over the place while doing their slowly animated arousal movements. Something like blush is simple and less immersion breaking, so it would be an excellent feature to have.

 

[hryh23k9823u]

This and nipples erect with frostfall, some good ideas lately uh

[Fredas]

 

I took a moment to investigate how EDialog achieves its blush look, and it turns out that it uses exactly the approach that I wondered about in the OP.  That is, it includes its own transparent blush texture and superimposes that over the faces of NPCs.  The curious part is that it seems to do this by using its own mesh of part of the face.  This really puzzles me because every NPC has a different face, pretty much.  I have to wonder how it doesn't end up looking basically like a mask, or like a red blob is hovering in front of an NPC's face.

 

I can confirm this as I have used EDialog for a bit through it's upgrades--it has a few glitches and I ended up disabling the blush function because it created weird anomalies with other mods I was using. Some characters with ceratin faces would end up with texture stripes on their faces, so removing the blush feature would get rid of that. Also, the geometry is still persistent even if it's not visible, so when you have a mod that forces shaders on top of the faces (like Cold and Wet--though that mod also has it's own set of anomalies...), you can clearly see the geometry that overlays the face...

 

Okay, so that is what I feared.  With a custom partial-face mesh of a specific shape, it simply could not be expected that there would not be visual anomalies.  A different approach would be needed - something which more directly influences the texture itself, such as some sort of shader like you suggest.  Whatever would be needed to achieve, in particular, the look of my third screenshot would be absolutely perfect.

 

I have also been testing the SexLab Aroused mod and I can say blushing would be an awesome add-on for showing arousal.

 

I agree.  I knew about SexLab Arousal but was sitting on the knowledge until I'd had a bit more time to consider the ramifications.  Mainly I wanted to investigate Sexlab Arousal and figure out how user-configurable it is as a framework, since my idea of a state of arousal for the player is one that is mostly or entirely up to the player, as far as when to have it active, and not a slave to any particular libido schedule.  (And this is reasonably true to life, since one can more or less choose for themselves when to be aroused.  Within reason. ;p )  I should take the time to re-stress that, ideally, the blush effect would not be an instant on/off but would slowly fade in and back out based on the circumstances.

[Fredas]

It looks like I'm hardly the first person to want blushing during arousal.  LL has an archived topic about it:

 

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/5016-req-blush-mod-or-textures/

 

Since I don't have any options available to me but to beg for expertise from experienced modders while also hunting for whatever resources might already be out there, the hunt continues.

 

[jacques00]

This is not a mod, but hopefully a resource to use for a mod if anyone is interested in making one. I have made some blush masks that a modder can use to make a blushing mod out of--it contains both mask and color information, 6 blush types for the two human genders that can hopefully be layered or combined on top of each other. Not sure if I'll get around to refining them or making other variants for other races, but hopefully this may be helpful for those wanting to make a blush mod and need the graphics for it.

 

12 files total, 512x512 pixels, .dds format with alpha channel, and fits with any head that follows the vanilla UV layout. (Note: The proof-of concept image is just physically applying the blush textures on the head texture images at 50%, so it's not really functional as all the characters using that texture wear it as if the blush was painted on them all. If the blush mod can be affected by an opacity variable, the blush can be more or less red than what is shown.)

 

 

blush_masks.zip

[bobtheslayer]

Good man, I hope to see this soon.

[Fredas]

Making good on my promise to hunt up resources, I've discovered a couple of new things.  First, take a look at these shots:

 

 

There is a pair of moles above the mouth of each.  This explains why the blush in these shots is so convincing: It's part of the texture itself.  (The middle shot here may be using a variant with heavier lipstick.)  I'm pretty convinced that my shot #3 in the OP also uses a texture with built-in blush.  This means that somewhere out there in the wild, these textures are up for grabs.  It would be very nice indeed to have them so they could be scrutinized, in order to hopefully work toward achieving their uniquely appealing effect.

 

[Fredas]

Now, my second item.  While doing the rounds on Japanese mod sites, I found one where they talked about a short-lived mod called Blush Nose Color (dead link - see below), which was apparently put together in order to effect a change to the color of EDialog's blush tint.  It's a modification to showracemenu and can be finely controlled with Race Menu or ECE.  As with EDialog, it is a simple tint.  But since it is tied specifically to character creation, and has no associated mesh (unlike with EDialog), I have to assume the effect is more reliably compatible with all faces and face mods.

 

A couple of shots demonstrating the effect.  First, EDialog's blush:

 

And now the effect achieved with Blush Nose Color.  A more pink color was chosen:

 

Tint solutions like this may be the most convenient method of achieving the Blush When Aroused visual effect.  Some tweaking of the shape and intensity of the blush texture could perhaps achieve the more genuine look of the texture-based blush I discussed in my last post.

 

The Nexus link for Blush Nose Color is dead, but somebody did repost the file here.

 

[Fredas]

Intuition led me to suspect that the pattern of proliferation of the "texture blush" I identified above must mean that it was a commonly available file, and that it was only a matter of finding the right circle in order to acquire it.  I did find it.  In the end, the source was surprisingly mundane.  The texture came from the Mature Skin Texture and Body.

 

When I investigated said texture, there was nothing to indicate where the blush came from... until I took a look at the femalehead_sk.dds.  Here is what I saw:

 

 

So.  The origin of the blush is this "subsurface detail" texture which provides an exaggerated blush look to most of the face, excluding the eye sockets.  And the result is strikingly appealing.

 

Does this point the way to a possible method for achieving the blush?  Could there be a way of substituting the _sk.dds information during gameplay?  Or maintain and access two separate copies of the head texture (one with this blush _sk, one with a non-blushed _sk) for swapping during gameplay?

 

On that note, I also happened to discover a good example of where EDialog's mesh-based blush fails as an implementation:

 

 

 

[jacques00]

Now, my second item.  While doing the rounds on Japanese mod sites, I found one where they talked about a short-lived mod called Blush Nose Color (dead link - see below), which was apparently put together in order to effect a change to the color of EDialog's blush tint.  It's a modification to showracemenu and can be finely controlled with Race Menu or ECE.  As with EDialog, it is a simple tint.  But since it is tied specifically to character creation, and has no associated mesh (unlike with EDialog), I have to assume the effect is more reliably compatible with all faces and face mods.

 

A couple of shots demonstrating the effect.  First, EDialog's blush:

 

 

 

 

And now the effect achieved with Blush Nose Color.  A more pink color was chosen:

 

 

 

 

Tint solutions like this may be the most convenient method of achieving the Blush When Aroused visual effect.  Some tweaking of the shape and intensity of the blush texture could perhaps achieve the more genuine look of the texture-based blush I discussed in my last post.

 

The Nexus link for Blush Nose Color is dead, but somebody did repost the file here.

That's pretty cool. The only disadvantage I see using the tint version is that it could only be edited in the character-creation menu since it dynamically alters the tint texture of the character's face, utilizing the mask to sort of spray on the design. I could be wrong, but that might stress the game out if you have that kind of function running actively outside of character creation, where not only the playable, but the non-playable characters running around with scripts all actively changing textures. If this is not the case and it works very similar to graphic overlays, then that's fine--it's just the physical saving and overwriting textures that would be the potential problem.

 

I would definitely opt for a graphic overlay option, and one that can have variable opacity--I just don't know how to go about that with Skyrim's engine, but I do know it should support layered textures/shaders (which it does for decals) and shaders that fade in and out (I'm also sure other mods have utilized these features as well--like Expired's RaceMenu and all the various plug-ins for that). Stringing that together with script-based parameters (tied to either original variables and/or dependent on arousal-type mods) will give us the blush mod we are looking for (though, personally, I use ECE, so I try to stay away from RaceMenu in that is kills some of the sliders ECE has, unfortunately, resetting the face values when I access the showracemenu options screen--then again, I do an have old and probably outdated version of ECE...).

 

Else, I know for EDialog, aside from shader anomalies, if the character has a small nose, NPC or not, you really don't want to see the blush from the side view... it might look okay in front of the character, but definitely not from the side (it's very obvious floating geometry)...

[jacques00]

Intuition led me to suspect that the pattern of proliferation of the "texture blush" I identified above must mean that it was a commonly available file, and that it was only a matter of finding the right circle in order to acquire it.  I did find it.  In the end, the source was surprisingly mundane.  The texture came from the Mature Skin Texture and Body.

 

When I investigated said texture, there was nothing to indicate where the blush came from... until I took a look at the femalehead_sk.dds.  Here is what I saw:

 

 

So.  The origin of the blush is this "subsurface detail" texture which provides an exaggerated blush look to most of the face, excluding the eye sockets.  And the result is strikingly appealing.

 

The "subsurface detail" layer, mostly overlooked by many retexure mods is a texture that alters the lighting on the player's skin, not necessarily the blush, per say, but when light hits the skin at a certain angle, it will reflect/project these colors to some degree on that particular map (like real skin would if you held it up to a light source). In the CGI world, it's called the subsurface scattering of light (on skin and other material as well), and these effects can be mathematically calculated in the physical world, but for game engines, this effect is usually faked using that particular map and tying it in with a property of the shader.

 

[Fredas]

The "subsurface detail" layer, mostly overlooked by many retexure mods is a texture that alters the lighting on the player's skin, not necessarily the blush, per say, but when light hits the skin at a certain angle, it will reflect/project these colors to some degree on that particular map (like real skin would if you held it up to a light source). In the CGI world, it's called the subsurface scattering of light (on skin and other material as well), and these effects can be mathematically calculated in the physical world, but for game engines, this effect is usually faked using that particular map and tying it in with a property of the shader.

 

So you're saying that the blush wouldn't show up at all under some circumstances, if generated via utilization of _sk manipulation?

 

If true, that's not as disappointing as I expected, because as you say, the engine should have some means of layering textures, and what I'm thinking is that the above _sk image could be used as the complete basis for a custom blush texture with transparency.  It does produce a more appealing effect than the all-too-basic oval-shaped texture used in EDialog and Blush Nose Color.

 

Now, bring on the experts. ;p

[Guest kimbale]

Maybe this can help: http://www.loverslab.com/topic/22195-sexlab-hormones-2013-11-04/ It's dynamically adjusting textures.

[Fredas]

Maybe this can help: http://www.loverslab.com/topic/22195-sexlab-hormones-2013-11-04/ It's dynamically adjusting textures.

 

Thanks for the tip.  I took a look at the package, and it seems like what it may be doing is altering the various race menu variables which dictate skin tone.  That is promising.  I can envision one route to success wherein we create a full-face transparent texture based on the earlier _sk image, and either insinuate it into the race as a new tint or outright replace a preexisting tint (as Blush Nose Color seems to do, unless I am gravely mistaken), and then use the method discovered by the author of Sexlab Hormones to dictate the degree of transparency of the blush texture, and finally use a system like Sexlab Aroused to dictate the moments when control over the blush texture's transparency will enact and cease.

 

My tired mind likes this.

[Fredas]

Following up on the basic outline of how this effect might be accomplished, I learned recently that Enhanced Character Edit allows the utilization of complexion sliders for adding moles and freckles, and these sliders make use of special full-face textures with said features.  The textures are greyscale except for the areas corresponding to the intended complexion, as with this freckles specimen (may need to look closely):

 

 

 

If it is possible to tap into these character creation sliders, or insinuate a new one, then this seems like a good route for achieving the desired effect.

 

[Fredas]

Time for an update on this.

 

Felt I had to tackle this one myself, so I've been doing so.  I now fully appreciate why the author of EDialog decided to use a custom mesh.  There's a particular quirk with how SKSE's tint mask scripting works.  It doesn't just change the color; it reloads the entire tint.  This has the side effect of causing some chug, much as one might get when using sliders in Showracemenu.

 

The consequences of this dubious quirk are not insignificant.  I'll have to change the nature of how the blushing effect manifests.  (Keep in mind that I want them to fade in / out.)  I'll also have to significantly reduce the quality of the masks themselves, so as to minimize the chug effect.  (Even the tiny default tintmasks cause at least a little chug.)  Considering the effort that went into them, that's a particularly hefty blow.

 

Good excuse to take a small break.

 

[Fredas]

Alright, status.  Prelim script is in to fade-in the blush.  Works fine, and at a bell curve.  End result is good.

 

Problem is that the tint update function required to cause new tint colors to actually manifest always gives a split-second jolt of inactivity (framerate halt).  On my system it's about 100ms - very noticeable - and that's using just the default tints.  In other words, unless I can convince the SKSE guys to iron out this function some, the whole idea of fading the blush in / out is out the window, and the only thing that can still be done is to simply turn blushes on or off at the appropriate moments.  Which is weak.

 

[gooser]

How about loading in a sequence of variations of the same tint with progressive alpha values?

[Fredas]

How about loading in a sequence of variations of the same tint with progressive alpha values?

 

Same deal.  Nothing changes on the face until one calls the one and only function which updates the face colors.  I'm pretty sure it's reloading every single tint mask in its array (of 15).  The funny thing is that whatever SKSE is needing to do which is causing the hiccups does not have any specific bearing on the modification of a tint's color, and I proved this by forcing the fade to occur over a one-second span (updating every 0.1 seconds).  I only got two hiccups, which agrees nicely with the fact that the hiccups occur every 0.5 seconds at their highest clip.

 

There's good news, though.  I determined that if I keep the texture filesize below about 200k, the hiccups appear not to happen.  This is a preliminary result, since I seem to recall that they did happen once before even with the vanilla texture (41k).  Could be that unknown factors may tip the balance unpredictably.  Anyway, I now have impetus to continue.

 

Spoke too soon.  I understand what's going on.  One thing it is definitely refreshing is the entire face texture.  So any non-vanilla face tips the balance and causes the hiccup.  So yeah, project on hold.  I am in fact trying to see what the SKSE folks have to say about it.