Nifs for Lights from Lights, candles, etc. List

[ShadowDancer]

OK, I think these are ready. I redid the ones with the highpoly on the vertical and gave them a rounder edge on the horizontal instead. They went up slightly except for the LightComLamp01 which went down a bit. Additionally, I found out that I messed up one of the materials and fixed that as well.

[WTFimLEET]

Wow. They look really, really good. :goodjob:

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by ShadowDancer
OK, I think these are ready. I redid the ones with the highpoly on the vertical and gave them a rounder edge on the horizontal instead. They went up slightly except for the LightComLamp01 which went down a bit. Additionally, I found out that I messed up one of the materials and fixed that as well.

I checked them out and they're great now :goodjob:

I made a few modifications to them that I want to mention. You don't have to fix what I mentioned below, as I already went ahead and did that and then added them to the bsa.

[blockquote]1. If a texture doesn't have a specular map* then the ambient, diffuse and specular color on the NiMaterialProperty block should be set to pure white. If a texture does have a specular map, like MetalIron04.dds for instance, then the ambient and diffuse should still be white while the specular color should be black.
[indent][/indent]* A texture with a specular map has an alpha channel in the normal map.
[indent][/indent]The important setting of the three is the specular color, because Oblivion simply ignores ambient and diffuse colors. Nifskope displays them though, since it's designed to work for a variety of computer games and some of them do use amb and dif, like Morrowind for instance. But by setting the amb and dif to white you ensure that the model displays the same way in Nifskope as it does in Oblivion.
[indent][/indent]To see if a texture has an alpha channel, which for normal maps equate to having a specular map, you only need to open the texture and check which DXT format it's saved in. If the format is DXT1 it doesn't have a specular map, if it's DXT3 or DXT5 it does. Personally I use the program Windows Texture Viewer to check out DDS files, which works similar to the built-in image browser in Windows.
[indent][/indent]So to sum up I set the specular color to black on the NiMaterialProperty block of the Line01 branch on LightComCandle01.nif (and on a few others).

2. LightComTorchringTorch.nif didn't have tangent space information.

3. If you check out for instance the LowerRing NiNode branch on the LightComTorchringTorch.nif the translation is X0 Y6.75 Z12.75 and the rotation is Y90. Ideally all the values should be zero. I don't understand the mechanics behind it but when a model doesn't have zero translation, rotation and scale the bounding box can get screwed up. The bounding box in this case is the oddly-colored rectangular cube that lights up when you select the model in the Construction Set. In some cases it's not a problem, in other cases it makes the model more difficult to select when working with it. There's a very easy fix for the problem though - all one needs to do is right-click on the branch and choose Transform > Apply. (Another option is to add the Reset Xform modifier before exporting it from Max.)

4. I was able to optimize your nif files with PyFFI. Sometimes by a little, sometimes by a few hundred faces.[/blockquote]

All in all, very nice work! I especially liked the LightComLamp01

Any thoughts on what you want to model next?

[ShadowDancer]

I thought I ran them all through PyFFI? I guess I missed some when I was redoing things on some of them. hrug: I figured I would take a stab at the LightComLamp02. This nif is using the new MOPP shape stuff they added so you might want to check it out and see if you can find anything wrong with it. I played with it and I didn't notice any issues (other than that my video card wasn't getting full power and Oblivion was doing the multi-colored checkerboard pattern crash). The nice thing is that now the candles and the stand have different havok materials.

Tazpn deserves a round of applause if you ask me, especially now that the collision stuff is working straight out of 3ds Max without any NifSkope alterations in the latest MaxTools 0.2.17.6 prerelease and that you can do multiple havok materials. Tazpn was also nice enough to add a collision tutorial that can be found here.

[ShadowDancer]

I need some input from others on how this looks - please see attached pics. Does this candlestick look ok? I decided that just a brass candlestick looked a little plain so I added a bronze trim strip to it. Attached are also the nifs in case anyone wants to see them in game.

[nick_op]

What's the polycount at the moment? I ask because the mesh is looking a little blocky, though that might be the intention. Perhaps chamfering some edges would take away the low poly feel but retain the blocky style?

For the version with th candle, did you get rid of the circular part at the top - afterall the candle will mean that it isn't seen.

I like the textures that have been used - the brass and copper colours work well together. I think they could both use a bit more specularity though, as they are not very shiny at the moment. Again, if that's the intention ignore this.

Just my thoughts, hope I'm not sounding overly critical.

[ShadowDancer]

Originally posted by nick_op
What's the polycount at the moment? I ask because the mesh is looking a little blocky, though that might be the intention. Perhaps chamfering some edges would take away the low poly feel but retain the blocky style?

For the version with th candle, did you get rid of the circular part at the top - afterall the candle will mean that it isn't seen.

I like the textures that have been used - the brass and copper colours work well together. I think they could both use a bit more specularity though, as they are not very shiny at the moment. Again, if that's the intention ignore this.

Just my thoughts, hope I'm not sounding overly critical.

Polycount? I am not sure truthfully. I know that I saw something somewhere on how to find out what it is but I don't have a clue where to look to find the polycount. Its a pretty simple model so it is probably pretty low. If I understand what polycount is it is probably ~136 not counting the candle on the nif with the candle & ~244 on the NoCandle nif. I was going on the image below for the light and didn't really think about the blockiness.

Exactly right. I made the candlestick without the recess originally and just added the candle to the nif with the candle and then added the recess to the one without the candle in case someone wanted to use it without a candle for clutter. It would look pretty wierd without the recess to stick the candle into, or at least it did to me.

I have been modelling for less than a month and so I am a complete noob. I really don't know how to change the specularity other than 0 or 1. At the moment, the specularity for them is set to 0 (black) on the nifs which I believe is the maximum for how shiny they are? I am not sure about this honestly. I think its more of the darkness of the texture rather than the specularity unless I am misunderstanding how that works. It may also be the settings I took the screenshot in - those were taken with no anti-aliasing and no HDR if that makes a difference. I am not sure which settings I should use for the screenshot for other people to look at.

I don't think you are sounding overly critical. I asked for comments because I wanted them to be assessed with other eyes than mine. :yes: If I did something wrong or an improvement can be made, someone else will probably pick up on it before me and I will hopefully avoid doing the same thing again. If I wasn't prepared for a critique, I wouldn't have posted the files and pictures.

Additionally these 2 nifs and the 2 before this were made with the new MOPP export for 3ds Max and should be tested by others to make sure that they don't cause any problems that I didn't catch when I was testing them. It seems to work fine for me, but it wouldn't be the first time for some odd thing to affect a different computer in a different way.

[Razorwing]

There's several ways to see a model's facecount.
- One way is by selecting the model in 3D Studio Max, right-clicking, and choosing 'Properties'. The number reported in the Faces box on the data sheet popup is the model's facecount.
- Another way is by selecting the model in the Construction Set, which makes the facecount appear in the status bar. It's far to the right and called "Fac:".
- A third way, and the most ardous one, is to get the Num Triangles value shown in the block details of the NiTriStripsData/NiTriShapeData block on the mesh (NiTriStrips/NiTriShape) in Nifskope. It's ardous in the sense that there's usually more than one mesh and then you have to use window's calculator to add them up.

I like the squarish look of LightComCandle02.nif, but I think LightComLamp02.nif looks too squarish. I think the latter would look much nicer if the arms and legs had a soft curver.

[nick_op]

I find the best way of finding out the polycount in 3ds Max is with the Polygon Counter. Check out this image for where to find it. You can drag it onto the utilities list for easy access like I have. This method work better than the one suggested by Razorwing because it works with multiple objects.

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by nick_op
I find the best way of finding out the polycount in 3ds Max is with the Polygon Counter. Check out this image for where to find it. You can drag it onto the utilities list for easy access like I have. This method work better than the one suggested by Razorwing because it works with multiple objects.

I didn't know about that one. Sounds like a handy feature! :yes: