TRUE CIRCLET GEMS

Circlets. Ever notice how the gems in them don't really look like precious gems? Opaque, plasticky, bleh. Some texture mods try to solve this by drawing fake gem flare into the diffuse, but... it still looks off.

I decided to rectify this on the mesh level, by mimicking the configuration of the clutter gem meshes. The color with the clutter gems is handled not by the BSLightingShaderProperty, but by vertex colors. There's a sort of "backdrop" mesh *inside* the gem, with inverted faces and tangent spaces (IE: inside-out) that helps with the inner gem flare as well.

Here are the fruits of my labor so far:

First off, my personal custom Ebony Diamond Circlet.

http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/uploads/gallery/album_37/gallery_1503_37_127108.jpg

http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/uploads/gallery/album_37/gallery_1503_37_264585.jpg

You can't fully appreciate it until you get it in motion so the specular and enviro reflec effects can do their thing.

To see what the vanilla gems will look like, here's a little gallery

http://imageshack.us/a/img849/1999/ea9m.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img7/2622/w2il.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img853/1705/kq6r.jpg

There are a total of 56 meshes I'll have to manually alter in NIFSkope after modifying and cranking out the needed meshes with 3ds Max. I've plowed through the ground, human/elf male, human female, and elf female (from USKP 2.0), about halfway through. What I have left are the Argonian M/F meshes, and the Khajiit M/F meshes.

These look awesome.

Awesome! I always thought the look of the vanilla circlets was ... underwhelming. Looking forward to the release of this.