Thanks, that's a great idea. I'll see if that'll do the trick.

I think I figured it out.

Is http://img529.imageshack.us/f/morrowind26.jpg/ how it's supposed to look?

Vurt said on page 1 that there is a way to get a bump effect without the "shiny" and Draigr's pictures also looked better in that department.

Any tips?

Experiment with the reflect map. The smaller the light sources, the sharper the reflection turns out. Blur the reflect map heavily for a more matte material.

Ah, that did the trick (I just now saw your post )! Thank you!

Thanks for the tip. I played around with that map for a long time, but I wouldn't have thought that mindlessly blurring everything would give the results I wanted.

Now all that would be needed is a way to batch process morrowind meshes with nifscope XD

Manually editing them is pretty annoying, there's still lots to do until at least balmora is finished.

I'm happy to report that I'm happy with it. I'm quite sure if the effect looks exactly the same but I can definitely live/work with it. But [censored] it was tedious editing all the magics. Then I edited some out, like vampirism and detect spells, plus some others not used in enchanting. If anyone wants the esp just ask. Thanks again PLangky

What do you mean mindless?! You're approximating a convolution of the incoming radiance with the Lambertian cosine lobe BRDF. In other words, how the material is reflecting light in all directions evenly.

:)

Well, I was talking from a photoshop point of view, since I've already been tinkering with that maps for hours before reading/following your advice. I guess if I knew about the inner workings of (morrowind) reflection mapping, I wouldn't be here asking for tips. Put that way, "mindless" probably also fits, anyway :rolleyes:

No need to be a sesquipedalian. :whistling:





Honestly the best way is to just tinker around. It is sort of hard to explain, or illustrate as I have in the OP, any easier way to understand how a reflection map should look to attain a particular type of material or level of specularity/glossiness or lack thereof. Perhaps try thinking of the map as the destination of your light source, with a smother and or less noticeable falloff you will get a map that will render out with less specularity/glossiness. Does that make any sense? :S

I think so. At least my hlaalu reflection map looks pretty good now.
I'll post some screens when I visit Balmora next time

Has anyone made a tutorial explaining how to do all the things discussed in this thread yet? I'm making a sword that I envision having a semi-shiny silver blade and a wooden/gold hilt.

I thought of doing one when I find the time. It's pretty easy once you've figured it out, but getting there is painful. I would have loved a simple guide that at least explains what needs to be done in NifScope. There's a russian tutorial somewhere, but it didn't work for me. If there is a proper tutorial somewhere, I could not find it.

Basically, it's just a few steps for a basic mesh:

(0.: You should have your bump map (and gloss map if you want one) ready)

1.: Right-click on the NiTexturíngProperty in the Block list -> Texture -> Add Bump map, then choose your bump map texture

2.: In the NiTexturingProperty's Block details window, open "Bump map texture" and set the filter type to "FILTER_TRILERP"

3.: If you don't want a separate gloss map, skip this step: Add another map the same way as in step 1 and choose your gloss map. The gloss map can't be added directly, so I always select "add glow map".
In the TexturingProperty, double-click on "Has Glow map" to deactivate it again. Then double-click on "Has gloss map" and open the list that turns active now. Insert the number of your gloss map as "Source"

4.: Repeat 1-3 for all the textures you want to have bump maps on. (Note that this guide will enable the environment effect for all parts of the model, so there will still be a shiny gloss effect if you don't assign bump/gloss maps. There should be ways to exclude parts of the mesh, but I didn't need that so far so I haven't tried it yet )

5.: Right-click on the NiNode in the Block list -> Block -> Insert -> NiT... -> NiTextureEffect. It should appear with a 1 in front of it

6.: Repeat, just add a NiS... -> NiSourceTexture this time. This one should be number 2 now

7.: Click on the flower icon in the NiSourceTexture item that appears -> Choose your environment map

8.: In the NiTextureEffect's details, add your env-map by entering 2 in the "Source Texture" field.

9.: Go to the NiNode's details, increase the "Num Children" by 1 and add the NiTextureEffect (by entering 1 in an unused Children slot)

10.: Do the same with "Num Effects" and "Effects"

11.: Save



I hope I didn't forget anything

Seems a bit complicated since I barely know how to use Nifskope, but I think I can figure it out. Thanks. :goodjob:

Bump.

Aside from setting the filter mode in Nifskope to "FILTER_TRILERP", which other ways are there to troubleshoot pixellated environment maps? And what are the causes? On some meshes I am getting rather poor results even with env maps half, equal and twice the size of the texture map while others turn out just fine. I could maybe upload some screens if need be.

You could try saving as 32 bit DDS, if you are using DDS that is.