Nifs for Lights from Lights, candles, etc. List

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by ShadowDancer
No, it was definitely something in the collision and the lights didn't make a difference since I didn't change any of the lights in the areas where I was testing the nifs. It literally was lagging the movement of the player when the player got next to the model or jumped over it. Redoing the collision took care of the issue with no other changes to the nif or the area where the object was placed. I am guessing it had something to do with the number of faces on the collision mesh since I reduced those and it stopped hanging when the player got near the objects although it still looks like a lot in nifskope.

Aah, kk. Yes then there'd be no question it was the collision. That would probably have been a case where piggybacking the model could have been an option, but since you already solved the FPS probs there'd be no real need to do that.

Originally posted by ShadowDancer
All in all, really helpful information that should make things a lot easier in the long run.

Glad I could help.

[ShadowDancer]

Round two for the nifs. I think I managed to do everthing that was needed for them. Tangent spaces, removing ninodes, silgrad textures, etc. I chickened out on the candle and used one of the silgrad candles instead. I am not sure about the way to make the candle react to light properly so I figured it would be better to experiment some before trying that.

The only thing I would like to change is the material on the LightComCandle nifs to something a little darker, but there wasn't a silgrad texture that looked good on it other than the MetalIronRusty in my opinion. Anyway, here are the nine nif files. My next question is should I include the static models in the ST\Lights\Imperial folder in the CS/esp? Once I know that and the nifs are approved, I can upload the esp as well.

[nick_op]

Originally posted by ShadowDancer
Round two for the nifs. I think I managed to do everthing that was needed for them. Tangent spaces, removing ninodes, silgrad textures, etc. I chickened out on the candle and used one of the silgrad candles instead. I am not sure about the way to make the candle react to light properly so I figured it would be better to experiment some before trying that.

What do you mean by having it react to light properly? Is there a problem with the mesh/texture or is it just an appearance change you'd like.

The only thing I would like to change is the material on the LightComCandle nifs to something a little darker, but there wasn't a silgrad texture that looked good on it other than the MetalIronRusty in my opinion.

Try changing the settings on the NiMaterialProperty in NifSkope. Changing the ambient or diffuse colours might achieve the affect you want, possibly the emissive too.

[ShadowDancer]

Originally posted by nick_op
What do you mean by having it react to light properly? Is there a problem with the mesh/texture or is it just an appearance change you'd like.

Well, after looking at the candles in the CS, I wasn't quite sure about the way that the light seems to show through the candle's texture. Now that I think about it, I suppose that this is actually in the texture and would have been added in if I sampled a candle texture in 3ds max, but I didn't think about it at the time.

Try changing the settings on the NiMaterialProperty in NifSkope. Changing the ambient or diffuse colours might achieve the affect you want, possibly the emissive too.

I didn't think about doing that, although I should have. I will play with it and see if I can come up with something I like more, but the nifs are basically done other than my bias about the look of the one light.

[nick_op]

Originally posted by ShadowDancer
Well, after looking at the candles in the CS, I wasn't quite sure about the way that the light seems to show through the candle's texture. Now that I think about it, I suppose that this is actually in the texture and would have been added in if I sampled a candle texture in 3ds max, but I didn't think about it at the time.

You mean the way light shows through the top part of the candle and makes it appear to glow? That's easily achieved with a glow map.

I know there are some specific settings in the .nif to allow glow maps, but can't recall it exactly. It might be the name of the material setting.

For the actual glow texture, black is no glow and white is 100% glow, everything else is in between. You can also use colours in glow maps for Oblivion, though keeping it grey should suffice for the candle.

The name of the glow texture is texturename_g.dds (it acts the same way as the _n suffix for normal maps).

[Razorwing]

ShadowDancer: I've checked out the new version now. I noticed a few texture problems that led me to think your textures\ST folder has outdated textures. Could you please delete your meshes\ST folder and textures\ST folder and then re-extract the BSA? That should get rid of the old textures that have been discontinued/moved/renamed. (For instance there's no longer a MetalIronRusty.dds texture)

I should've said it earlier but our candletextures are recolored versions of Oblivion's textures and not futuresafe - but in that particular case I'm not too worried because we can bet the next game has candle textures too. You can of course use our recolors if you like but using the Bethesda candle texture is ok too.

I'm curious about one thing. When you tested the candles ingame did they have animated fire, like the screenshots seem to suggest in your second post? Because I don't understand how that would be possible without a NiBillboardNode to hold the fire sprite, like for instance on meshes\ST\Lights\Dunmer\DunmerLightCandle01fire.nif. If there isn't animated fire on your candles you could just copy-paste the ninode of that nif (#2, called Scene Root) and move it into place with the Translation data on the ninode block.

[ShadowDancer]

Originally posted by Razorwing
ShadowDancer: I've checked out the new version now. I noticed a few texture problems that led me to think your textures\ST folder has outdated textures. Could you please delete your meshes\ST folder and textures\ST folder and then re-extract the BSA? That should get rid of the old textures that have been discontinued/moved/renamed. (For instance there's no longer a MetalIronRusty.dds texture)

I should've said it earlier but our candletextures are recolored versions of Oblivion's textures and not futuresafe - but in that particular case I'm not too worried because we can bet the next game has candle textures too. You can of course use our recolors if you like but using the Bethesda candle texture is ok too.

I'm curious about one thing. When you tested the candles ingame did they have animated fire, like the screenshots seem to suggest in your second post? Because I don't understand how that would be possible without a NiBillboardNode to hold the fire sprite, like for instance on meshes\ST\Lights\Dunmer\DunmerLightCandle01fire.nif. If there isn't animated fire on your candles you could just copy-paste the ninode of that nif (#2, called Scene Root) and move it into place with the Translation data on the ninode block.

Heh, yeah I am probably still using textures from a few versions back. I will extract the new ones and check out what got broken and fix them. I should have thought that there might have been some texture changes.

As for the candles, yes they are animated flames using the FlameNode0 node (which really doesn't move that much, but it does move). I figured out how to use that and figured it was a bit nicer since it doesn't involve all of the data used to anchor and animate the NiBillboardNode making the nif file a little bit smaller. The FlameNode nodes don't have the damage sphere, but the damage spheres were generally incorporated for larger fires like those in Kvatch or campfires and the like rather than lights. I wrote up a tutorial on the CS wiki that can be found here about how to create lights using the FlameNode and AttachLight nodes and how to import them into the CS so that it won't crash the CS when the lights are placed into the render window.

Edit: Here are the lights again. The only textures that look to have been broken were the LightComCandle ones so I changed the texture on them to MetalIron03 which I like a little better anyway after seeing it in game. At least, those were the only ones that turned black after removing the ST mesh and textures folders and then extracting them from the latest bsa. I also added a view of most of the objects in the first pic and some close ups of the lights so you can see the effect of the AttachLight and FlameNode nodes in the pictures.

BTW, I checked out the difference between the file size of the LightComTorch01 using either AttachLight & FlameNode nodes or the NiBillboardNode, and it goes from 35.2 KB using the AttachLight & FlameNode nodes to 45.8 KB using the NiBillboardNode.

[ShadowDancer]

Here is the esp for the lights that I have made so far. After digging through the SilgradTower.esm, I went with what seemed to be the common usage for the lights.

Under Lights - ST\Lights\Imperial
StSdLightComCandle01
StSdLightComLamp01
StSdLightComTorch01
StSdLightComTorch02
StSdLightComTorchring01

Under Static - ST\Lights\Imperial
StSdLightComCandle01NoCandle
StSdLightComLamp01NoCandle
StSdLightComTorch01NoFire
StSdLightComTorchringNoTorch

[Razorwing]

Time flies by so fast, doesn't it? One day I'm thinking "I'll respond to that a bit later, I just have to do this and this and this..." and then all of a sudden a week has gone by. Sorry man

Alright then I don't have any worries about the candles working, and I think your method of doing it sounds very interesting. :goodjob: Thumbs-up from me on the filenames, cs entries and folder location as well.

The only thing left on my comment list is what I mentioned a few posts up, that I feel the candles are needlessly hipoly in certain parts. Like the sides of the discs on for instance LightComCandle01. Players would have to view the candle impossibly close to see the level of detail you used; when they view it from a normal distance they can't make out that the discs are rounded so finely as they are. But they can make out the twelve segments of the disc from a normal distance though, so if I were to give advice it would be to make the vertical disc sides more simplistic and instead give it more horisontal segments. And on LightComCandle01 it could be a good idea to give a curve to the handle, making it slightly convex or slightly concave, just to avoid the straight cylindrical shape the handle currently has. Having said that, I don't think the facecount of the candles would be a problem so if you feel you don't want to work more on them then they would certainly be useable as they currently are

[ShadowDancer]

I did a rework on the LightComCandle01 nifs. Is this more of what you were thinking? I can redo some of the others, but most of them are a little more involved than this one so it will take a little longer to do them the same way.