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Howto reduce eye reflection


zaira

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Where do you get the "Environment_mapping" dds?  I can't find it in my textures (I did unpack the Skyrim bsa textures btw)?  Also, I'm curious as to why you seem to be doing this in NifSkope rather than changing the textures in CK?  Just trying to understand what is being done and why. 

 

I have the same eye problem with a couple of NPCs I've made where I did a full face sculpt in RaceMenu, exported, made the headparts and texture sets, used NifMerge to merge the sculpt with the FaceGeom, etc.  What's puzzling me is I have two other NPCs I've made using the same method and they never have this problem, but the other two do.  Yet I followed the same procedure and used the same sources meshes and textures for each.

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Where do you get the "Environment_mapping" dds?  I can't find it in my textures (I did unpack the Skyrim bsa textures btw)?  Also, I'm curious as to why you seem to be doing this in NifSkope rather than changing the textures in CK?  Just trying to understand what is being done and why. 

 

I have the same eye problem with a couple of NPCs I've made where I did a full face sculpt in RaceMenu, exported, made the headparts and texture sets, used NifMerge to merge the sculpt with the FaceGeom, etc.  What's puzzling me is I have two other NPCs I've made using the same method and they never have this problem, but the other two do.  Yet I followed the same procedure and used the same sources meshes and textures for each.

I posted in your thread, but i'll copy/paste in case you check here first, "Yeah, i should've mentioned, it's done in Nifskope. Under Shader Flags 1 for the eyes NiTriShape, just uncheck the eye_environment_mapping and recheck the regular environment_mapping, then pop in the missing textures as per that link."

 

As for the CK, why would you need to do anything in the CK? CK doesn't handle .nif shader flags and texture paths (other than for texture variants for the latter, but that's not what we're doing here).

 

Also, for the OP, also check here since there's one more step after fixing the shader flag.

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Because the tutorial iw as following did almost everything in CK.  Other than the eye reflection problem it worked.

 

Now I'll be the first to admit I'm new at this, part of why I'm asking questions.  But based on the tutorials I've followed so far here's what I do.  (Sticking this in a spoiler to avoid clutter)

 

 

 

I sculpt a head in Racemenu and export that.

Then exit out of racemenu (which for me I've got a save game at Helgen so I'm using that, I name the character whatever I'm going to name the npc) and open console and use the spf <name> command to export again.

 

Then I close Skyrim and go to CK

I create or open the NPC, and import the custom appearance

First I create my texture sets for brows, eyes and head (body and stuff too if I'm doing the full deal)

Then I create the head parts, again, brows, eyes, and head an use the texture sets I just made.

That done I go back to my NPC and set it to use these.

Then I export same as I would for grey face fix

 

Then finally I go into nifmerge and merge the sculpt with the nif in Facegeom and done.

 

That's the quick overview but its the way I learned to do it and up til now its worked without problem

Having to edit the textures in Nifskope is new to me.  I've done that for hair meshes and custom armors but until now had not done that for NPCs.

 

If I need to change all the textures in Nifskope, then what is the point of those texture sets?  Do I actually need both?  One or the other?  Is one better than the other?  If so why?

 

When I run into something new, I ask questions.  All about knowing the why of something.

 

 

 

As for solving this, I still haven't found any "environment_map"  The only "environment" texture I can find in my entire texture folder is the "eyeenvironment_map"  So where is this other map coming from?  A mod?  Some archive I didn't know to unpack?  Did I maybe somehow not unpack it from the Skyrim.bsa?

 

In my current project, not having the above map I found another map used by a custom npc someone else made.  I copied that into the texture folder of one of my npcs and then went into Nifskope and changed it to point at that (didn't need to change anything else all the other textures were already there as they should be, but they are pointing to the default directories and not my NPCs texture folder.  Pointing that out incase it matters.); that seems to work.  What I've noticed is that the new map I'm using is much smaller than the original was about 171kb in size and 1024 x 512 pix, the new one I'm using is 3kb and 128 x 64 pix.  Again, just pointing out differences as I try to figure out exactly why one works and the other doesn't.

 

Something appears to be happening to the eyes when I use Nifmerge and its almost like the way the texture is mapped to the eye mesh is being altered.  If I were to just guess based on what I've seen (that it only seems to affect one eye and always the same one) it seems like maybe somehow the environment map has been stretched across both eyes instead of mapping to each.  If that's the case the map I'm using works probably owing more to dumb luck, and probably would work just as well, or better, with no map or an all black map (because apparently, if I were to guess) the eyes are no longer correctly mapped for the environment map).

 

Here's the map I'm using btw.

 

eyereflection.dds

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-snip-

That guide's pretty much right, though just remember you don't actually have to make separate textures for stuff if you're just using your default textures for them, and aren't releasing them with those particular textures or something.

 

As for the map, again, it's a shader problem in the .nif, not a texture problem. The texture's fine and you're trying to find a second texture that doesn't exist in the first place, the problem's in the .nif, that's why you need to go in there and set the proper flags like it says in the Nexus link.

 

The reason you set textures in the .nif is because that's then the mesh's own "default" textures. The only time you ever need to do anything in the CK is if you're making standalone texture variants (allowing you to just use the one mesh with several texture sets, instead of several copies of the mesh and several texture sets which is kind of messier), which is what you're doing with the standalone NPC textures since you're still using your own female body. If you were to give them their own body meshes as well, you'd be able to set the textures in the body .nif's and not the CK if you so chose. A texture set just overrides a .nif's own specified texture set on a standalone basis, that's how different races use different normal maps for the same head meshes for instance.

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