Another nifscope question:

[daglob]

Sometimes a piece scoped from one mesh to another picks up a horrendous reflection. It is so reflective that all detail is lost. Changing the refl texture for the piece to black does not solve the problem. The only thing I've been able to find that will stop it is to change the lightmap to solid black.

Has anyone had this happen an found a better way to fix it?

[Cyber Burn]

I second this question, I can't even begin to say how many Skopes I've ditched because of this issue.

[hoss20]

Any reflection issues I've come across are usually solved by changing the texture effect of the newly pasted piece to the NiTexture Effect that's found underneath the Omni node of the existing mesh (inputting the number of the NiTexture Effect node under Effects in the Block Details).

[SickAlice]

A number of different circumstances I can think of. What hoss said tends to work.

What you've described, glossiness to the point that detail is lost is usually caused by the Specular channel. I add that a lot on purpose to give a " true metal " look to mesh parts. Blender will more often than not put this on output meshes by default. It's simply Flags=1 to have the effect on, Flags=0 for off.

Also another Blender likes to attach is the Stencil Property and it will cause the effect as well. That's an easy fix as well as you just change any and all of it's settings to 0.

So if you were skoping a piece from one of the meshes I use changing the Specular channel would fix that. From say the Silver Samurai mesh you would apply the method hoss stated as that's the issue with that one (the glossy pieces are all pointing to one specific texture effect).

Edit: Almost forgot. This one was is rare but as well the effect can be caused by glossiness float setting in the material property. Usually the default setting is 10.0000 where the aplha setting default is 1.0000. The less that glossiness float the more the effect your speaking of happens. As it was explained to me this tells the game how smooth a surface is and the lower the number the more smooth and therefore more glossy and as well less detail that will be displayed from the texture. Rare to see it in a nif but worth checking. Also a good trick to know when giving your own work special effects. The combination of that variable and the alpha as well as changing the color values is whats used to create things like auras, light constructs and realistic looking glass.

[daglob]

I have to admit, I am completly lost on this one. So, I'm asking for help.

[SickAlice]

Still lost on this issue? If so could you:
a.) upload just the .nif file and share the link
or
b.) take a screenshot of Nifskope that shows the values in question.

[detourne_me]

A very simple fix, which will negate all reflection, is to make a solid black lightmap

[daglob]

I have done that. I still wanted to know how to fix it so that I can still make other parts reflective.

I'm afraid the only place I have to upload it is a Yahoo group. Right now it's in Character Obscura (I):

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/characterobscura/info

It's in the Files in a folder entitled "Help!"

My thanks to any and everyone who has offerred help.

[hoss20]

I've sent the fixed skope your way. I'm not sure what happened, but the NiTextureEffect and, as a result, the lightmap file, was set as the base texture for the nose piece. It also didn't have any refl or glow files. I went ahead and set all of the texture files (base, refl, and glow) to Heimdall_Extras, since that's what the other headpiece is set to.

[SickAlice]

Ja, Yahoo is no go from my connection. I'll swing on it the next time I'm in town just to throw in and solve the riddle here. I see the name Heimdall up here though. " Heimdall_Extras " is familiar sounding. I don't have an actual Heimdall mesh on my hard drive cept the one I cobbled together on Silver Samurai (the first mesh I think of when these issues come up). I'm pretty sure that texture assignment is shared by other meshes as well? Do you remember where any skoped parts originated. I may have them and can look for the bug. Really what hoss pointed out sounds like the direct issue, but again the effect you pointed out can be caused a few different ways since your asking how to resolve it in the future. In the original nif it usually isn't an overlooked bug but set to give that mesh an exact effect.

[hoss20]

SickAlice, I don't want to give away what Daglob is working on, but the problem wasn't with anything sharing the Heimdall_Extras art files. The issue was with a "Wolf Nose" piece that was attached to the helmet/headpiece. I just assigned the art file for the nose to the same as the headpiece. I don't recall seeing this type of piece before, so I don't know if Daglob got it somewhere outside of Freedom Force and that's where the problem originated.

[daglob]

It's actually the nose off a Ratman mesh. The helmet is from Red Wolf, whose helmet looked more like a snubnosed bobcat than a wolf. Kenn X stuck it on there; I don't know how, magic maybe.

[SickAlice]

Kewl. That's what I thought too. Mainly it because the parts where moved from a mesh were the unorthodox settings where matched by everything else but when they came to the new nif things got messy. That's why I kept bringing up SS. That one is notorious like that, whereas the settings match when the parts are at home but can cause problems if you move them elsewhere. The Killer Frost I did is even worse, totally unfriendly to skopers but it's oddball settings work for it. I'll try and make up a tutorial when I have time on fixing texture issues and using the various nif settings to pull off dramatic effects.

[SickAlice]

I'm looking at it right now. In " nose " node in the NiMaterialProperty the Glossiness is set to 100.0000 where it should be 10.0000 or less. There's also several other flaws in this piece and the rest of the nif as hoss said (NiMaterialProperty has no ambient color setting, nose texture assignments are wrong as hoss said, cane2 is missing refl and glow assignment, highboots are assigned to texture that isn't present "Hidden_extras" to name a few). Not a real resolution to the standard issue as this one has specific issue across the board.

[daglob]

I looked thorugh the scope again and noticed that several textures were missing. They have been added in the soon-to-be-finished product. Mostly, I think some were missing because the character (Blackhawk) didn't need them. I'm adding them back for Skywolf.