Working with glow, lightmap and reflection tgas.

[Outcast]

What's the difference between the three of them?

In trying to skin other meshes, i just found out that some meshes require these tgas to be included in the skin. Trying to omit one would suddenly make part or all of the skin appear pink in the character tool.

Would blacking them all out, cancel any effect they have on the skin's appearance?

I just noticed that when i use a skin for example on a male basic mesh that requires no glow,lightmap or reflection tgas and use it again on a different mesh that require these tgas, even though i tried blacking them all out there is still a slight difference in how they look in the character tool. On the male basic mesh, the skin looks clear and bright. While on the other mesh, it looks a little bit blurry. How do you fix this?

[daglob]

Painting them completely black would be the best thing to do if you don't want the effect. Some people reduce them in size to save space, since they "need" them but don't use them, but I only reduce mine to 3.566 inches square.

[laughing paradox]

Think of the lightmap as the way the lightbulb is shaped. If you look closely on the mesh, you can see how the lightmap looks on the skin. It's the light source.

Think of the glow as the color of the lightbulb. Putting it black means it'll be 'invisible'..make it red, and you'll see a red hue on the whole skin.

Think of refl as the shiny surface of the skin. Putting it black, again, means it'll be 'invisible'..or not shiny. Placing the reflection on certain parts of the skin will make only those parts shine back.

Different meshes have different reactions because some don't really 'enable' the lighting effects. I noticed in some skopes I have, some parts won't shine. (There are ways to fix that, though.)

I tend to leave glow black at all times. However, if I were going to make Radioactive Man (from the Thunderbolts), I would try a green glow..since he, y'know,  glows green. :)

For reflection.....what I'll do is add a layer to my (work in progress) skin, and make it all black. Then the only layers above that black one will be the ones that I want reflected, like a metal bracelet for example. That way, all the items on the skin will be perfectly placed in the refl file. You can lower the opacity of the 'metal bracelet', so it doesn't blare too brightly. Then save that as the refl file.

I hope that made sense.

[Previsionary]

I'll point out that skins don't always come with these files because the skins will use the _glow, _refl, and lightmap from the standard folder if they're not around. However, FFVTTR has a finicky engine in general.

[Outcast]

Thanks for all that info guys.  :doh:

I'll try to tinker with them some more, maybe i can make the skin less blurry.

[House Quake]

reflection controls how parts of a skin reflect light
glow controls how parts seam to radiate light
lightmap controls how lioght appears to hit a skin and is esp important to how the reflections appear on the skin

Most meshes actually require these on thier skins except for the very oldest of meshes. But as mentioned... it the meshes standard skin is present and has these textures... it may not always be necessary for the skin.

BUT

As a good force of habit always include every refl, glow and lightmap textures relative to a skin and and its various textures.   Reason being that the refl and glow always corersponds to a 'non-effects' texture in a 'layered' sort of way... ie male_basic_refl and male_basic_glow textures are mapped exactly the same as the male_basic they relate to.  The same is true with all meshes and other textures like extras etc.  The lightmap is unique

If a standard skin uses the reflect layer or glow layer and your skin does not have its own present... you may get the undesireable appearance of reflections or glow in odd spots.

reducing textures you don't use (to 64x64 for instance) and blackening them is a good habit.  Usding these layers properly can give some skins an extra umph.