Nifskope and it's complexities...

[cordanilus]

As some of you may know, I have been running numerous experiments as to BC's limitations and capabilites using Nifskope.  I've run into many interesting things...and I thought I seen it all...until now.  I am unaware of previous attempts at MultiTexturing in the format I am about to show you, so forgive me if this has been attempted before.

I was looking at the Bridges in BC and was checking out the complexity of the NiNode Heirarchy and one thing caught my eye...NiMultiTexture.  I further looked into this detail and decided to see if this would work on a ship.  My test ship, the CGIVoyager.  ( Just a note, this is for testing only...not to be for release if the parties therein are concerned. )  I have discovered that the ship looks slightly better, how the light affects it are different as to how the BC engine is programmed to.  (Will post some pictures later)

Another thing I am testing is the use of the NiSpecularProperty and how the NiMaterialProperty affects the specular.  Attached are examples of the CGIVoyager in combat.  There you will see the difference in what I am talking about.  I'm not sure if this is caused by the NiSpecularProperty or the use of the NiMultiTextureProperty.  We'll see.

[Kirk]

It looks like the specular level is turned way up.

[cordanilus]

Yup, you were right.  I turned on NiSpecular in nifskope for that ship and the light reacts to the ship nif too much.

I have also discovered something new which I'm really excited about.  I've been doing more experiments with NiMultiTextures and I found that you can get glows without using the "_glow" suffix on the texture file and no alpha channel.  The glow maps are separate from the base map and only shows on the dark side of the ship.  Look at the pics below.

I added those red glows only on the glow map.  Even though I didn't put them in the right spot, these pics will show you that they do indeed stay separate.  On the "Brightside" pic, you can barely see the red glow at all.

[tiqhud]

hmm , great cord-.

[Kirk]

So BC is capable of indirect illumination? Awesome, cord, can I see what you did? I'd like to reproduce this on my end.