Reducing the size of an fx

[Jimaras8]

Hello, team. As some of you know i'm in the final round of adjustments/fixes for the latest MA expansion that i hope to be able to send to Benton by the end of the month (fingers crossed). I have been trying to make tombstone phantom pistol bullets smaller and remove the electric effects in order to use the new fx as Blade's garlic silver bullets. I have managed to hide the electrical parts of the core.nif but i dont know to reduce it's size? Any suggestions?

[Jimaras8]

I have managed to somehow scale up/don projectiles like bullets but i'm having trouble with beams. Dies anyone know how to make the electromagnetic pulse fx core.nif thicker? Which part in nifskope should i isolate?

[Operidot19]

Did you ever figure this out? I'm trying to learn nifskope myself.

[oktokels]

I managed to increase the size of rocket_fist_sentinel a little, to fit my visual expectations of the power.

open core.nif in nifskope, and  in the scene_root search for a "scale" option. Change the number just a little, 0.5 is fine. Keep doing it until you get what you want.
that's it, it worked for me. 

[Jimaras8]

Okto, that works great for most fxs except beams. It somehow stretches the core.nif and it distorts it. If you manage to figure out how to make beam rays thicker, let me know since i'm very interested in that 

[oktokels]

If you manage to figure out how to make beam rays thicker, let me know since i'm very interested in that 

In that case, i believe you can make the beam thicker just by modifying the texture. You can try that; just open the beam texture and make the beam thicker in paint.net or any image editing software and see if it works.

Recently i made different type of beams and you definitely can make the beam thicker or narrow:

The first three beams are made by me. You can just copy an existing beam texture, erase any image in it, paste yours and save it as a new beam texture. You can see that the third texture has a variable thickness, and i can make it thicker or narrow it by just editing it in paint.net.

[Jimaras8]

Thats interesting. Do i have to change all the textures in the core.nif? For example im trying to make the emp besm in the game thicker.

What option do i choose in paint.net?

[oktokels]

Do i have to change all the textures in the core.nif?

No, just the one that is the actual beam. Generally the name of the texture starts with "beam_".

What option do i choose in paint.net?

These two:

The first one to select the beam or a part of it. The second to move the selected square to make it wide or narrow.

[UnkoMan]

If you can't manage to do what you want, feel free to PM me, and I'll get you to send along the .dds
I can widen it in, like, a minute, so it's no problem at all.

As stated, there is no nifskope work required for this. Just texture work.

By the way, okto... cool beams! It's been a long time since I've actually been in game, but I believe FF just stretches a beam from point A to point B, correct? It doesn't loop or anything, so no need to worry about making a continuous texture? Just checking on that.

[oktokels]

By the way, okto... cool beams!

Thanks Unkoman, those are a set of beams that i was creating for Wildfire from Legion of Superheroes. Wildfire uses a special type of energy, that its called "anti-energy", and i couldnt find any beam fx that satisfied my visual expectations of that. So, i decided to take a look at the comics to see how it's portrayed there and just copy the beams from the comics directly into the game lol. I had to change the brightness and contrast setup of the comic images, and pull up the saturation, just to match the style of the game.

Here are the source images:

Spoiler

It's been a long time since I've actually been in game, but I believe FF just stretches a beam from point A to point B, correct? It doesn't loop or anything, so no need to worry about making a continuous texture? Just checking on that.

That is correct, the game just stretches the image. 

[UnkoMan]

Oh, smart! Take them right out of the comics.
They're great!

[BentonGrey]

Man, getting the FX texture from the comics is brilliant!

[Jimaras8]

Thanks a lot for the response guys, i think i managed to make it work somewhat. Hey okto, do you use the hue tool to change the color of the beam alongwith saturation and contrast?

[oktokels]

Thanks a lot for the response guys, i think i managed to make it work somewhat. Hey okto, do you use the hue tool to change the color of the beam alongwith saturation and contrast?

I don't remember very well, but probably i did change it just a little, just to make the colors more flashy.