Help with NIFSkope texture issues!

[Bubbajones_ya]

I've been making armor for Squall from FF8 and am now trying to get some of the details worked out before moving onto his jacket.

 

The issue I'm having (and have had it with some other meshes I've messed with in the past) is that I can't seem to get the lighting to work properly on the clothing.

 

The clothing/armor does not have and shadows cast upon them, and appears very bright. However, if I enable SLSF2_Assume_Shadowmask, then shadows appear on the clothing as they should and the clothing isn't super bright anymore BUT it becomes partially transparent (you can't see the body through the clothes, but you can see through parts that the body isn't behind like the edges for example) and completely invisible through water. You can see the clothing while your camera is under water, but if the character is under water and the camera is above water or vise versa, the clothing becomes invisible.

 

 

I've seen a few threads saying to make sure that the normals are faced, then that NUM UV SETS is set to 4097. I have made sure normals are faced (and then update tanget space) but the "NUM UV SETS" option isn't there on any mesh I've looked at (stock Skyrim, modded, or my meshes).

 

I believe I have the current version of NIFSKope as well 2.0.0 alpha 5.

 

Here are some pictures of the current file I'm working on now. My hair mesh is also acting this way as well...

 

 

 

I don't know if this is as simple as a wrong shader flag enabled/disabled, or if there is something more complicated going on. I have a diffuse, normal, and specular map on the model.

 

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[ValenV]

always better to post the nif and .dds maps to take a look, can be different settings

[Bubbajones_ya]

Alright thank you! Here are the nifs of the shirt and hair and dds files:

 

 

Leonhart Shirt.nif

SquallsHair.nif

Leonhart Shirt.dds

Leonhart Shirt_n.dds

Leonhart Shirt_s.dds

Squall Hair1.dds

Squall Hair1_n.dds

[par6six6]

My tip of the day; when in doubt, use a vanilla asset as an example.

Your BSLightingShaderProperty options are slightly wrong. You do not need Assume_Shadowmask on clothing. What you do need in Shader Flag 2 is EnvMap_Light_Fade. So change those options.

Num UV Sets was changed from an integer field to the flag field Vector Flags. Your flags there are equivalent to 4097 so that's fine.

One thing I do notice immediately is you have Vertex Colors set to Yes in the TriShapeData but do not have a Shader Flag 2 Vertex_Colors flag. If your mesh is using actual vertex colors (not just all white) then you need the Shader Flag 2 option. If your mesh is not using any vertex colors, change the option in TriShapeData to No.

The rest of your issues may be your texture files. Clothing does not need a specular map. That should be built into your normal maps alpha channel. You may have incorrect NiAlphaProperty values as well, can't tell.

Oh, I see you posted your files as I was writing this. I can take a look and advise if I see any more issues.

[par6six6]

Ok, so for the shirt (haven't looked at hair and probably won't I have no experience with it), couple more things to fix up;

 

- remove that wonky Emmissive Color going on there - you don't need emmissive color, just zero out the values

- your .dds file was saved as DXT3, save it as DXT5

- if you think the shirt is too bright, darken the normal map alpha more, in fact it wouldn't hurt just to have an all black alpha channel

- in NIAlphaProperty, uncheck Enable Blending, not necessary. Change the Alpha Test Threshold to 128 (typical default)

[ValenV]

Settings had to be adjusted and the maps are very terrible,

the diffuse is very bright, the normal alpha channel is too bright for some fabric that looks like linen, there is an environment mask assigned that is pretty useless; the hair had also a bright alpha. Test all a bit in game and see if it's okay, I can't right now.

 

Leonhart Shirt.dds   Leonhart Shirt.nif  Leonhart Shirt_s.dds     SquallsHair.nif   Leonhart Shirt_n.dds   Squall Hair1_n.dds

 

And what the user above said is a good suggestion, when uncertain you better transfer the data from a vanilla model, better if similar in fabric or material and then make the changes, otherwise it's most likely you will waste time correcting others' mistakes.

[Bubbajones_ya]

Awesome thank you very much guys for looking at my files! I've been gone most of the day so I haven't had a chance to test them but I'll have some time in the morning!

 

I'm extremely inexperienced in working with textures (as you can probably tell) so I'm not sure how to adjust the alpha channels in the normal maps. I'm using the gimp for photo editing, but I imagine its possible to adjust the settings with that, I just need to figure it out. I just made the normal map texture by using the "normal map" filter in the gimp settings from the standard texture, then exporting the file as the normal file. 

 

I did have a chance to try disabling the enable blending and changing the alpha test threshold to 128 and that fixed the transparency issue under water!!! I will look into how to adjust the alpha in the normal maps and I will also take a look at the files you edit ValenV! Thanks again!!

[Bubbajones_ya]

I just want to post again and say thanks for the help! I figured out how to edit alpha masks in the gimp. It appears that making the alpha channel of a normal map black is equivalent to making the main channel more transparent (it's probably not though so at least I know how to edit the alpha channel now.)

 

I have to look into environment maps and see why it was applied (don't really know much yet but I'm learning!) and also why there is an emissive color on the max files I export, It's not hard to just zero them out in nifskope so I may just do that (I'm just learning 3DS Max as well so there are way too many things I don't know how to do yet. I won't learn until I make tons more mistakes though!)

 

 

The transparency issue under water is completely fixed when disabling blending and setting the alpha threshold to 128.

 

One question I did have though is that when I disable blending, it seems like you can't have semi-transparent textures anymore. Is this true? If so, I can work around it but for things like certain clothing pieces or edges of the hair, it can take away some detail.

[ValenV]

...

Yes, you figured right, Skyrim have a problem with blending even more than previous games and this pisses off a lot since you cannot make use of the nice transparency effects,

so we are doomed ans stuck with 4844 128 (commonly). It will conflict first of all with hair, you could apply blending at least in lower parts like boots or pants (since the hair wouldn't be in the way), indeed the part with blending enabled alpha must not be overlayed by another alpha (hair or other parts); I use blending for lower parts of personal outfits and they display just fine, still can be present a sort of flickering and other weirdness depending on enb and settings; so too bad, in the end it's better to avoid this too and go with no blending.

 

About hair, they are two meshes, the one with blending (like flag 4845/threshold 40) and another one usually named "hairline" with no blending (like flag 4846/threshold 200), so about your hair add into the same nif (it's not necessary to have two separated ones) the NiTriShape with the blending-disabled alpha assigned and you are set. I mean this: SquallsHair.nif

You see there is the first mesh with blending and then the solid one to backup the consistency.

 

About the maps, the diffuse alpha is the one that gives transparency, from black (invisible) to white (visible); the normal alpha is the specularity, the more it's bright the more the shine; the environment mask is the alpha channel of a cube map (missing in your nif), to be very clear: it defines which areas the cube map will be applied and how much, it usually must have a very high contrast because only certain materials are highlighted and the more is the white intensity the more it will reflect. In your case (a shirt with no metal parts or anything special, it's like simple linen) it's not necessary but if you still want to apply it, assign the cube map and set the Shader Type to Environment Map, then add to Shader Flags 1 SLSF1_Environment_Mapping, you would also check the Environment Map Scale value (at 1 if you don't need differently) since it can reduce or increase drastically the effect and it's a setting very easy to overlook, and that’s' pretty much all.

I do not suggest you in this case to add environment, but still.

Glad you are still working on your project, good luck!

 

[Bubbajones_ya]

Thanks again for those clarifications!

 

Knowing that trick to have two models for blending will be a HUGE help! Thanks for helping me understand that! I'm probably going to try and use this trick for other items I make. I'm going to make a leather jacket that has a bunch of feather type stuff around the collar and I know blending textures is going to be super important to make it look believable, so adding two pieces there will probably do the trick! If too much flickering is present, then I'll just default back to no blending as recommend and use the 4844/128 settings though!

 

With the pants/belts I made, the belt and buckles are one model so I applied a cube map to that to make the buckles shiney. I wasn't sure how to make the metal buckles super shiny/reflective, but prevent the belt from being so shiny as well. I messed around with adding a specular texture and blackening out the leather part which I think kinda worked but not too much. I'll look into the environment/cube map setups and see what I can do!

 

 

I just did a little reading to better understand textures some more so forgive me for my ignorance/questing but if I understand this correctly:

 

The environment map is a texture file (.dds) that takes the same shape as the item's diffuse/normal texture (uses the same UV map layout), but the brightness/darkness applied to this texture dictates which parts of the model are going to be shiny or not IF a cubemap is also applied to the model?

 

The cubemap is basically a flattened out cube that simulates reflections (based on the cubemap somehow), so these maps have a generic layout and can be applied to any model regardless of the UV map/model geometry?

[ValenV]

...

Yes, your understanding of the cube map is alright and the same one can be applied to any model regardless.

The environment mask works like an alpha channel for the cube map, in poor words it says to the cube map which areas must affect and how much strong; all the areas that are not black will be affected by the cube map and the more the intensity of white, the more strong.

My English is quite bad, hope now it's more clear.

 

So about your buckles, to have the desired effect (only the buckle affected and not the whole belt), you must have an environment mask in which all is black or at least very dark except the buckle area. Then you try different settings to suit your needs or you just reduce/increase brightness of "white" areas, it depends on the look you want achieve.

 

At any rate, in case you are in need for that buckle because the result really doesn't look right, you can send me a pm with the mesh and all the .dds you did so far, the diffuse that I need as a reference and the normal to see if the alpha it's okay just to be sure, also the cube map if custom, it's useful to see how bright it is. So I create the _m, let's say at a medium range so you can use it as a base, adjusting to your liking that and/or the settings after that.