TheUnknownChemist

Wasn't a big fan of the last series, after David Tennant left it seemed to lose a bit of the seriousness it had built up. At first I just didn't give it the time of day thinking it to comical and dumbed down. However that being said there was a few really good episodes and once I gave it a good viewing my opinion of it greatly improved. Hopefully this new series will see Matt Smith really come into his own as the Doctor the first three episodes so far have been really good with massive improvement to the visuals (in other words not looking like a copy and paste job.) The story line they are going with has so many possibilities it could become on of the best seasons ever. Overall big fan of Doctor Who watched them from a young child and glad to see it back on the air. Just my two cents

Ahh yes indeed it does, played about with it a fair bit last night. Can see the benefit of using it for sure. Thanks Vince one thing about edge split can you use it on only a specific part of a mesh or does it have to be all of it, like say I just wanted to isolate the blade for use with edge split.

Wow lot's of info, trying to make sense of it all never used EdgeSplit modifier but just tried it and I can't seem to get it to work, it just sets the whole object solid. will do some reading up on it. I will try to remodel the hilt a bit was never that happy with it's size. A lot of the info given has already improved on the sword and my knowledge. Still new to all this and seems there is always more to learn

After looking in nifskope I found what you mentioned about face normals and update tangent, I darkened texture of diffuse and normal map and for the glow made a light greyscale image of the selected areas from the diffuse map. Not to sure how it all works but it does no more shiny, I must have my other swords set for a darker normal map hence no shine and all (might have to play about making them shiny, just to test and learn) And in blender I just set the whole mesh to set smooth from the editing(F9) window to all my meshes, I thought that was just how it looked when rendered didn't realise it had an effect outside of blender to. Which is handy Alwasy wanted the blades more solid looking Thanks for all the help Trollf got enough info here to pick apart for a few hours now

Okay cool thanks for taking a look at it, half of what you said is new to me, like updating tangent spaces and making solid faces on the blade. Not that clued up on nifskope Texture wise what you mentioned I can do. What I don't get still is why it is so shiny what setting has made it like that, I test with my character in the all together to avoid any conflict of enchanted armour ect and none of my other swords shine like this one yet they all are set up the same way. I will look into what you mentioned and how to change what needs to be changed and see if it has the desired effect. thanks

http://www.mediafire.com/?g9h4lhci3qb8y5s That's a quick rar file with the textures and nif file (not the blend file can add if needed) any help would be great thanks I have a glow map already made and in use. You will see what I mean when it's opened, just baffles my brain this is one of the first meshes I made for the crystal collection, so not sure what happened.

I have a slight problem with a model or maybe a texture I am not sure which, but it is a visual problem hence why I post here. The problem is the sword has a shine to it, a glossiness that is similar to a glass weapon. I do not know how I have this shiny texture, as in blender I did nothing to change the texture (as far as I am aware) I have made other swords the same way and no shiny weapon. In nifskope the NiMaterialProperty is set to material: ambient is grey, diffuse whitish, spec is grey and emissive is white (so it can glow) not an EnvMap2 that produces the glass shine. I have also checked the diffuse textures for unwanted alpha channels or something that shouldn't be. I have experimented with the normal map, made it light, dark, a mixture of the two; I even tried an unedited normal map. I have tried it with and without glow maps as well. All through these tests the sword remains nice and shiny, I can't work out why. All paths are correct and files placed in the right folders. If anyone can help me resolve this it would be great. I may be doing something very obviously wrong but it is past my expertise. I can post screenshots if it will help, I will also happily send the nif and texture files for anyone that might want a closer look. just pm me. Thanks in advance

Cheers Vince will look into it, not sure why it wouldn't work on the OF just copied and pasted from this topic lol

Thanks IS nice to know I am on the right track at least, and cheers for the good info will be sure to remember and put it in my big book of Blender stuff

I agree with everyone on the build your own. One great thing about building your own PC is it's fun and you know where to look if something goes wrong (relatively speaking) and the cost can be very cheap. Although a fan will be more cost effective there is something very appealing (to me anyhow) about water cooling it just looks cool and since my rig can sound like a rocket ship taking off the extra cost for no noise would be well worth it.

Ah thats the one thing that still stumps me a bit is getting the uv maps right. What is a UV island? is that the little sections of the uv map itself? I tried manipulating each cell of the uv maps on a previous test mesh and it just distorted the texture. granted it was a curve that I made straight so the lines did not match up for some reason. Overall though do you think the unwrap was okay, I personally am never to sure if they are all that good as they can be a bit complicated to my eyes when moving them to photoshop. Thanks for the interest and advice