NiAlphaProperty causing glare

[Razorwing]

I ran into a bizarre problem with opacity that I don't know how to solve.

The left shot shows the parchment in dynamic light - so far so well - but when I turn on bright light it glares me in the face. You'd think it was the specular map, but I tested and the effect happens whether the _n has an alpha channel or not.

Thankfully for me the first piece of the puzzle revealed itself before long:

The problem goes away if I remove the NiAlphaProperty node, but naturally that would render it useless.

I did add a mostly black specular channel to the _n map but it didn't affect the glare. I tried every setting on the NiAlphaChannel I could think of, but to no avail. Does anyone recognize this problem and know of a solution? In case it can be of any use I attached the nif.

[RideWithTheWind]

I don't know how to set alpha channel correctly in nifskope, so when I need alpha, I just copy and paste the alpha branch of another nif that uses alpha, and I paste it on my new nif. I don't know if it helps cause maybe the problem is on the texture itself.

[IAMTHEEMPEROR]

Is the normal map alpha set up properly? There is also a glossiness option in NIFScope which can be turned down a bit.

[Ghogiel]

try 2 things.

turn the specular level to black in the nimaterialproperty.

and proabably what is actually the real issue. Remove the nispecularproperty. I cannot see a reason why you would put one of those in a paper tristrip

[Razorwing]

RideWithTheWind / IAMTHEEMPEROR: I appreciate the thought

Ghogiel: Thanks for your suggestion. I tried both, but it didn't work. In a normal case it would, but this is an odd one since the problem doesn't exist until I add a NiAlphaProperty node to it. The reason I added a NiSpecularProperty was because I wanted to see if I could control the glare through the specular map, but it didn't change.

I uploaded a copy of the textures -here- in case you or anyone else wants to check them out. They should go to textures\ST.

[IAMTHEEMPEROR]

Alright, I had a look at it and ran a few tests with a mesh.

Image 1

I made a new normal map with alpha and applied it to a floor mesh. It had a big glare. Then after looking at the mesh I realized the gloss slider was pretty high, which led to.....

Image 2

I turned the gloss slider far down, but that actually made the problem worse. So then I tried.....

Image 3

I turned the gloss slider all the way up, and it was barely better than Image 2 but still far from good, so then on to.....

Image 4

I made another normal map with a few different settings, it was a bit better, but still too glossy. Then.....

Image 5

I realized I never tested it with the original texture, so I put it on the mesh, turned the gloss slider down to about 1/6, 1/8 of the way down, and I think it came out perfect, where the paper isn't shiny at all and the ink is a wee bit shiny.

I knew it was all in the gloss.

[Razorwing]

Thanks IATE, I'll try that!

[Ghogiel]

cool. Interesting too.

I think gloss in the material properties works the same as gloss in a max material. But what is the connection between the alpha property and gloss. hmmm

another case for the nifskope xfiles