MTichenor

I reposted 4 of the armor sets in my Shiny collection, version number 1.1. They use entirely new environment maps (as CaBaL requested). I was experimenting with the daedric armor, making the diffuse very dark. Honestly I like it...in dark areas it looks almost black and glowy red. In bright areas it looks like brushed metal, though darker than steel. I had to increase resolution on the armor to 4k in order to fix the brushed steel effect they had in the vanilla armor. Please review and critique.

Nexus search wasn't behaving at the time probably. I just searched for it and found it through the search system.

Eventually. I'm more interested in textures right now. Speaking of...I fixed that broken environment map, and I'm in the process of changing all the meshes to point to the new environment maps.

Thank you for pointing that out. I didn't realize the environment maps were faulty, and will fix them. You could have been a bit more polite about it, though. However, if you create textures with the assumption that the environment map will have a particular look, you're a bad texture artist. Getting upset about a change to the environment map is pointless; they're designed to be changed to suit the environment, not the object...that's why they're called "environment" maps. The changes I made to the environment maps were simply for consistency. You can't change the environment maps as the character moves from location to location in Skyrim. So, instead you must make an environment map that will work in ALL environments. This means the environment map should be vague, have all colors, have varying degrees of light and dark, and generally be brighter above than below. The cube maps should also be appropriate to the material: dull materials should have a heavily blurred environment map, and bright materials should have a sharp / high contrast environment map. If the material will reflect only a specific color (e.g. green or yellow), that environment map should have only that color.

Yes, I was referring to world-space (or, more accurately, object-space) and tangent-space normals. The primary conflicts are going to be on the object for which there are AMB textures, but no environment mask. However, one very quick and ugly solution is to simply copy the specular map (the alpha channel from the normal map), and paste it into the environment mask texture. After that, simply paint over any non-metallic parts of the environment mask texture with black. Also, apparently my mesh edits do work with some of the body mods, such as UNP. Yay.

About Texturing with Environment Mapping The diffuse map is a combination of an object's color and opacity, with opacity set in the alpha channel. Some texture artists tend to include bright spots in the diffuse map "where the light would glint off edges and stuff". This would be fine IF you do not have specular maps or environment masks. Correct practice when using environment mapping is to put those bright spots in the specular map and environment mask. The normal map is a combination of an object's surface normal vector and specular amount, with specular set in the alpha channel. The normal map contains direction of a vector pointing out from the surface of the object, with X Y and Z direction stored in the Red Green and Blue channel respectively. There are two kinds of normal maps, one in which the XYZ is absolute (which tend to have all colors) and one in which the XYZ is an offset relative to the direction of the surface (and tend to be mostly sky blue). The environment map is similar to what you would see in a panoramic camera shot. It contains 6 images that can be arranged on sides of a cube such that if you were sitting in the exact center of the cube, it would look as if you were sitting where the camera was. In Photoshop, the first four images are the sides, the 5th image is up and the 6th image is down. The environment maps are cube maps, and working with them in photoshop requires you set the nvidia DDS plugin save mode from 2D Texture to Cube Map. You also need to enable mipmap generation for Cube Maps or they won't work in Skyrim. The environment mask contains an objects reflectivity. The environment masks are 2D textures, and require you to set the nvidia DDS plugin save mode back to 2D Texture (if you've been working with Cube Maps). Mipmaps are not required for environment masks, but is recommended for both texture quality and VRAM usage. When using an Environment Map Scale of 1.0 in the BSLightingShaderProperty, you can use the following as a guideline for making or editing textures: Medium diffuse, zero env mask, zero to low specular for cloth. Low to medium diffuse, zero env mask, low specular for leather. Low to medium diffuse, zero env, medium specular for stone. Medium diffuse, low to medium env, zero to low specular for gems and glass. Low diffuse, low env, low to medium specular for dull metals. Low diffuse, medium env, low to medium specular for bright metals. I HIGHLY recommend not using any value less than #202020 on a diffuse map unless you don't intend it to be visible at all, and not using a value over #808080 unless you intend it to be brilliant white at all times. Using a value over #808080 in the environment mask will make environment mapping overly bright in dark caves, resulting in the material looking like it glows.

Aiyen, making new meshes or animating them is non-trivial, but adding environment mapping to them is. z929669, about half the armor/weapons didn't have environment masks, and I had to create those from the existing specular maps. If CaBaL changed the specular maps, then those environment masks won't match the texture. You'll have bright shiny spots in odd places where the specular map changed. Since z929669 requested it...Here's how to change meshes to incorporate environment mapping. 1) Open the NIF in NIFSkope. 2) Click the mesh you wish to add environment mapping to, and locate the NiTriShape in the Block List. 3) Expand the NiTriShape in Block List and expand the BSLightingShaderProperty under it as well. 4) In the Block List, click the BSLightingShaderProperty to bring up it's Block Details. 5) Under Block Details change the Skyrim Shader Type from Default to Environment Map. NOTE: If Skyrim Shader Type already has a shader type other than default, do not change it. 6) Under Block Details change Shader Flags 1 to include SLSF1_Environment Mapping. 7) Under Block Details change Environment Map Scale to 1.0. 8) Under Block Details, click the blue arrow in the Texture Set. 9) Under Block Details, expand the Textures field. NOTE: The first string under textures is the diffuse map and opacity map. The second string is the normal map and specular map (_n.dds). 10) Set the 5th string to the path and filename of the desired environment map (_e.dds), if it is not already set. NOTE: The environment maps can be found in the data\textures\cubemaps folder. 11) Set the 6th string to the path and filename of the desired environment mask (_m.dds or _em.dds), if it is not already set. It should take less than 1 minute to do this. I did about 400 meshes in a day.

@CaBaL Just wanted to say: Thank you for all your hard work. Your texture work is absolutely amazing. I was hoping you'd eventually work on weaponry. I only ask that you try to keep the color tones matching between the different weapon types. Dark grey for iron armor and weapons, blue-grey for steel armor and weapons, black/silver/gold for elven armor and weapons, matching olive-green for orcish, etc.

I'm not an expert in magic...if you have balance suggestions for the magic perk trees, I'd love to hear about them. Everyone says that destruction needed more damage, so I added perks that do exactly that, but I don't know anything about balancing the other perk trees since I've never played a mage-primary class.

I do change the position of the perk stars. The vanilla skyrim perk trees don't match the constellations, which is one of the things I changed...I tried to make sure that the perk tree shapes match the constellations as closely as possible. I think I did a pretty good job, with the exception of the pickpocket tree.

@techangel85 Actually, I don't think the Skill Interface Retexture will cause any problems, unless they change the shape of the constellations. I've never seen that mod before, but it's actually pretty awesome. Wish I'd seen it before! @Farlo I've gone ahead and sent you a message on SkyrimNexus. I assume you've got the same username. @z929669 Fairly sure I've seen your username on SkyrimNexus too...it's rather hard to forget someone's name that starts with a z and a long string of numbers, even if I have no clue what the numbers are. :-p

I just released yet another mod in the SkyRealism series. I figure that since nearly all of them have been submitted (and accepted) to both STEP and GEMS, I should probably recommend this one as well for those of you who are interested. SkyRealism - Balanced Perk Trees It got bumped off the SkyrimNexus front page within the first half hour it was up, so I doubt it will ever get any of the attention it probably should. Those who've tried it though, like it. Cheers! ;) ~IndigoNeko / MTichenor