ACCEPTED Wetness Shader Fix (by Ablaze666)

[Greg]

Discussion topic:
Wetness Shader Fix by Ablaze666
Wiki Link

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[DoubleYou]

This mod has file conflicts with several mods in our setup for textures. The mod page recommends loading it early and let everything else overwrite. However, that isn't a perfect solution.

There are two material conflicts, which are easily checked, and it is obvious that the material conflicts should be forwarded.

• materials/interiors/building/bldwooddoo01.bgsm
• materials/interiors/building/bldwoodfloor01.bgsm

In order to do this, we can simply load the plugin after these two conflicting mods:

• FlaconOil's Complete Retexture Project.esp (created during our BA2 archiving process)
• High Resolution Texture Pack 2K and 4K - Valius.esp (created during our BA2 archiving process)

Since our current rules already make FlaconOil's Complete Retexture Project.esp load after High Resolution Texture Pack 2K and 4K - Valius.esp, we only need to create a rule to load after FlaconOil's Complete Retexture Project.esp.

However, that brings us to the texture conflicts. The textures provided are specular maps. Specular in Fallout 4 uses red channel to set specular intensity and green channel to set gloss map/surface roughness/cubemap reflection.

The main issue I find with specular maps in Fallout 4 is the cubemap reflections being bad due to incorrect specular. You can have some overly shiny objects that just flash light at you. There is some mud in Nuka World in my current setup that has this issue currently that I haven't fixed yet.

The author is recommending us to allow all texture mods to overwrite. Since we use Fallout 4 HD Overhaul as a base, and any BA2 or loose file we load after it is going to be overwritten, that doesn't actually work for us. Also, we have the case above where we need the material files to overwrite, and then we'd need the speculars to not overwrite, and you can only do one or the other while leaving it in a ba2 archive.

So we have two choices:

• Hide the textures ba2
• Keep the textures ba2 and allow it to overwrite our texture mod's speculars and hope they look ok.

Barring investigating all of these textures individually, which would be quite difficult, I think it makes the most sense to simply hide the provided textures ba2.

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Conclusion:

• Create a LOOT rule to load Wetness Shader Fix.esp after FlaconOil's Complete Retexture Project.esp (this kind of rule can't really be added to the masterlist)
• Hide the Wetness Shader Fix - Textures.ba2 file
• Keep an eye out for any issues with specular textures while it is raining that may possibly be resolved by using the speculars provided by Wetness Shader Fix. I doubt there will be any issue.

[DoubleYou]

Thinking about this further, I don't like the idea of hiding the textures. There is at least one specular texture that it adds that isn't provided by the game/mods, and it would be missing. So I am going to opt for choice 2: 

• Keep the textures ba2 and allow it to overwrite our texture mod's speculars and hope they look ok.

Given the nature of the guide mostly sticking to similar-to-vanilla textures anyway, I think it rather unlikely there'd be an issue where this would be problematic.