So I use Blender to work with NIF's, and I want to make a custom race that's kind of "bright" looking. I used a texture that's basically pure white with specks and streaks of very light yellow for a bit of texture. It works out pretty well; if I look at the model in Blender with no lights (I understand that's not representative of the model's light value), it just shows the texture without shading. That's exactly what I want it to look like in-game: Just the default texture, displayed with minimal regard to the room's light. Like the Lava square activators; they only get so dark, even in a pitch-black room.

Does anyone know if this can be done using Blender and GIMP, if necessary? I'd really appreciate any help.

I used this Dwemer armor mod. It used to stand out in dark like this --> https://www.dropbox.com/s/u5umai8uuqzo6rv/Glowing%20Armor.JPG
I lowered the emmissive color which fixed it. Maybe this is what you are looing for? I used Nifscope, so not sure about Blender options...

I am a complete newbie in modelling. I am just poking in the dark.

Yes, hollaajith is right, you can boost the emissive colour to do this in NifSkope really easily. Dunno about Blender, not used it!

I think you should edit the material of the object. I don't know about Blender, but you can do it in both NifSkope and 3ds Max. Nifskope is the easier way though. There's also a way to make textures that 'glow' only in some parts, it's usually used to make bright eyes or some glowing details. I know of a tutorial about this, tell me if you need it.

Tweaking the emissive color is a very easy way, but not that precise, cause it makes everything emitt equally that shares the same material. If you just want to achieve an overall glow, that's ok. If you want fine details only to have that effect, you'll need a glow map, which is just a greyscale map with black(no glow), grey(light glow) and white(full glow). A colored map works as well, but glow maps tend to easily overwrite the diffuse colors, so be carefull with the intensity.

Just put the glow map onto a layer above your diffuse texture in GIMP or PS, start with black(no glow) and paint in what is supposed to glow. In NifSkope all you need to do is right click onto the NiTextureProperty of the mesh Texture-> Add Glow Map.

Thanks for the help everyone! I've found the material light emission...Worked like a charm!

On a completely unrelated note (so as to not spam the forums with my threads), the first-person hands on my custom race are not working. My race uses re-textures of breton body parts. For the hands, I first made a "hand" type body part for my race using the "skins" model. Then I made a second "hand" part using the actual first-person hand NIF. For some reason, though, I can't see my hands in first person... Anyone know what's wrong here?

Could it be because of the name of the model?

It's either an issue with the name of the model or with the animations not reading properly or something. I tried copying the breton's hand model by importing it into blender, replacing "b_n_breton_hands_1st" with _b_n_emp_hands_1st." I tested it with a different race's hand.1st model and it worked fine... does it somehow lose its animation in the import/export?

EDIT: Duplicating the Breton's hand model directly works, but as soon as I import and export it (not changing it in any way) it stops working. I've tried it with and without BSAnimation Nodes and xnif & kf files. I'm apparently losing something in the process, but I can't tell what it is....

As far as I know (I might be wrong, but I doubt it) the animation isn't included in the model of the hands. If I got it right all you have to do is replacing textures and material of the hands, right? You might want to do it with NifSkope if you have problems. Also, be sure the name of the file is be "b_n_emp_hand.1st", and the body part in the construction set must have "the same name of the 3rd person hands".1st

NifSkope seems to be able to import and export first-person hand models without any trouble. However, when I change filename in the NiSourceTexture block, it's unable to find my textures. Under Render, I've set the texture path to \Morrowind\Data Files\Textures\ze, where my custom texture is located, and I added all of Morrowind's default texture directories in the folders view. I set the filename to exactly what the file is called (tex_white.tga) but as soon as I load up my custom race in the CharGen, it comes up with an error saying that the texture could not be found... any ideas as to why this might be happening?

I just noticed that glow maps show up very pixelated in morrowind:

nifskope: http://www10.pic-upload.de/06.04.13/r3q3bpze3ugd.jpg
morrowind: http://www7.pic-upload.de/06.04.13/i2upqxt7mj2.jpg

Its not that noticable in higher resolutions tho.

Right after the purple flower it needs to look like this: ze\tex_white.tga