Jump to content

DOWNLOAD MODS

Are you looking for something shiny for your load order? We have many exclusive mods and resources you won't find anywhere else. Start your search now...

LEARN MODDING

Ready to try your hand at making your own mod creations? Visit the Enclave, the original ES/FO modding school, and learn the tricks of the trade from veteran modders...

JOIN THE ALLIANCE

Membership is free and registering unlocks image galleries, project hosting, live chat, unlimited downloads, & more...

Graphic Artistry: Glow Maps


Recommended Posts

GA_GM_Title.png

What are they?

Glow Maps are an additional texture you can use to make specific parts of your textures glow when it's dark. The way they work is everything you don't want to glow is painted black while everything else is either a grey-scale version of your texture or a single colour.

What do they look like?

Here is an example of what they look like, this is a grey-scale version of the main texture. As you can see only a small part of the texture can be seen, this makes the gems on the sword glow while everything else has no glow.

ClassGM_01.jpg

How do I make them?

First thing you do is mask out all the areas you want to glow and either make them a single colour, say white for example and then paint the rest of the texture pure black. You then save the texture with the following settings:

Compression: DXT1 No Alpha

Suffix: _g

Place this in your texture folder alongside your other textures. Now it's time for some Nifskope Magic.

Open up your model in Nifskope, expand the tree branches and click on the BSLightingShaderProperty for your model, or for the part of the model you want to glow if it's in multiple parts.

ClassGM_02.jpg

Press F3 to open the Block Details pane and take a look at the first line called Shader Type. The value there needs to be changed from 1 to 2 for glow maps to work.

ClassGM_03.jpg

After that scroll down the list a little more and find the Shader Flags 2 property, click on it to select it.

ClassGM_04.jpg

Look over to the right and you'll see data like SF_ZBuffer_Write || SF_Vertex_Colour, double-click this list and a drop down menu will appear, check the SF__Glow_Map option.

ClassGM_05.jpg

Last property for us to edit is the Emissive Color property, click the colour Wheel and a small window will pop up where you can select the colour you want the glow to be. I choose white here so that I get a nice clean glow from it that doesn't overpower the colour on my texture.

ClassGM_06.jpg

:smarty: Smarty Says: If you want to adjust the strength of the glow you can adjust the Emissive Saturation property just under the Emissive Color.

Last thing to do is to add the glow map into our texture list, so click the BSShaderTextureSet and in the Block Details pane add your glow map into the third texture slot.

ClassGM_07.jpg

And after all that, we have a nice glow in-game :dance:

ClassGM_Final.jpg

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Thank-you! This is brilliant.

One question, and I hope I chose the right option.

For Shader Type my choices were Default, Environment Map, Glow Map, ect... I went with Glow Map, and in-game got the results that I wanted.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...