How To: Make Leaderheads! Ekmek's Guide

[The_Coyote]

problem one - no real idea without the file (but it could be that the leaderhead shader and the stencil property don´t work together - or need a special set up). But nevertheless you could simply do this in Blender - select the collar face, create a copy and flip normals - perhaps to avoid possible problems move them only a very minor part to the camera.

The problem with Cetshwayo should be the effect of the normal map (tupi_nrlm_1024.dds), if you look at your base leaderhead you will see that this structure would support the hair imagination. You should flatten (means give it the colour the left side has atm where you don´t see any structure) the normal at the place where the hair is in the diff texture

Edit: considering your lightning problem (flickering), additional to the 'normal' lights the NiPointLight (in my nif without name, number 314) with NiLightDimmerController as child controls the flickering
(locking at the colour i would say this is the [point] light with flickering animation)

 

[The Capo]

Edit: considering your lightning problem (flickering), additional to the 'normal' lights the NiPointLight (in my nif without name, number 314) with NiLightDimmerController as child controls the flickering
(locking at the colour i would say this is the [point] light with flickering animation)

Are you talking about the Dido leaderhead here?

 

[The_Coyote]

yes, was to lazy to create a new post there - also thought it fits better this thread with his knowledge base character.
The information i gave is still correct, of course including Ekmeks information about shader and non shader leaderheads and the use of the lights

and of course the numbers i gave where from the sitting bull nif

 

[Ekmek]

coyote said it right. go to the normal for the body and just look for the the top of the head (or see the map in blender) then use push or something to smooth it out.

not sure on the stencil. i dont recall having that effect but for cloth shaders pretty much make them plastic-y so no problem not having shaders there. the face is the important part.

i had the same problem with white on Meiji's gloves. you can tweak the material properties ( i tried) that but white glows with shaders no matter what so i think i set the material properties to be like a nonshaded object (open any nonshader nif and see that the materials have 0 for specular properties IIRC). the other option is to get rif of the shader - shaders are usually best for metal and skin from my work.

you can adjust the lighting on nehru too. click the bulbs and find the part that looks like the material property and you can tone it down. caesar has a bright one IIRC.

 

[The Capo]

Sounds like good stuff. So just to clarify here:

1) I have to follow your guide on shading old LHs to figure out how to shade the parts of Dido and Solomon that are nonshader parts.

2) Once that is done, I can check to see how the flickering effect works. If it does not work follow what The_Coyote just said and see if I have some type of setting wrong.

3) For Nehru I can either remove the shaders on the shirt (because it does make the shirt look a little plastic like Ekmek said) or go into blender and do what The_Coyote said to fix the collar again. Also I should check the material property on Nehru to tone down his hat. The hat isn't shadered by the way, so that isn't causing it.

4) On Cetshwayo I basically have to replace the texture in the Tupi_NRML file where the "ripples" are with texture that is "un-rippled" and that should take care of it?

Does that sound about right to you guys?

 

[The_Coyote]

ok it seems a shader is not necessary to have the flickering light working. Made a try with the original sitting bull (replaced the shader with the non shader mesh in the shader nif and made some minor adjustments [NiTriShape to NiTriStrips and removed the SkinPartition])

without additional changes it did not worked, but after changing the alpha property flag to 4845 and the emissive colour from full white to black it worked [i think the second was the important thing]. Not completely sure what the NiVertexColorProperty property does, but after i saw this in a lot non shader objects in shader nifs and i covers light, i would guess adding it could at least do no harm [but it was not necessary to get the flickering working]

edit: 1,3,4 ok - 2 see this post

edit2:

@ Ekmek
btw how would i add a shader to an old leaderhead (you will see, this is not really completely different from your way)

export the leaderhead again with the new scipts (one time it should be necessary to create the needed mesh information)
nifswap the exported leaderhead in the shader nif you want to use
copy in the nif a texture property from a fully shadered leaderhead
exchange the texture property from your leaderhead with the copyied one
change the texture names to fit the textures
add the additinal needed shader information

 

[The Capo]

I was really excited when I read that, so I loaded up my mod, opened Dido in Nifskope...

...and realized I had no idea what any of that meant, or at least how to apply it to Dido. What I have done so far is delete all of the "bulb" things (in the Dido LH) and then copy Sitting Bull's over to Dido. My first inclination, and it is usually a correct one, is that I did something wrong. Here is a screen shot, I have boxed in the Sitting Bull stuff I copied over. The first question is; did I do this right?

And if you can't tell from the image let me know.

 

[mechaerik]

On Cet.... the zulu guy, examine the Stencil property in the Block details, and one of them will say something like DRAW_...xyz or something, that should be DRAW_BOTH.

 

[The Capo]

On Cet.... the zulu guy, examine the Stencil property in the Block details, and one of them will say something like DRAW_...xyz or something, that should be DRAW_BOTH.

Pardon my ignorance. Ekmek's good at doing that , but what would this fix?

 

[Ekmek]

click on the stencil property line in nifskope and look at the block details. but usually it does say draw both.

 

[The Capo]

click on the stencil property line in nifskope and look at the block details. but usually it does say draw both.

It wasn't that, but it was in the Stencil propery. I had to change some value from 0 to 180 and it worked. And skinny Cetshwayo is up.

Now I just have to get Dido and Solomon right and I'm good to move on. By the way I have a pretty bad-ass looking Ptolemy coming up soon, nothing like the previews I posted before, and I'm pretty excited about it.

Anyway... what's up with you telling me to post more screens Ekmek? One's good enough, if they want to see Nehru, they can download Nehru.

 

[Ekmek]

Anyway... what's up with you telling me to post more screens Ekmek? One's good enough, if they want to see Nehru, they can download Nehru.

i want you to show off your face modelling work

 

[The Capo]

Well, if you notice I pretty much use the exact same format for every LH I ever post (it has obviously evolved over time, but the latest ones have the same format).

CENTER BOLD SIZE 4 LH NAME​

Random crap, notes, and credits.

Who the LH is for the idiots. (Although I didn't know who Fremont was, so maybe I can include myself... although if you would have followed this format I wouldn't have had to admit it here).

The Art Defines Code.

I hope you like it, blah blah blah. Enjoy.

And one pic.

That's just how I roll.

EDIT: in a strange way I feel like this forces people to learn how to add LHs (including all the XML), and maybe learn a little bit on their own. Which ultimately is for their benefit... plus I usually go out and smoke something after each leaderhead I post and It's quicker this way.

 

[The Capo]

I suppose since Dido will probably be the toughest, I'll try and knock Solomon out really quickly. I'll check your guide but I might need some help adding shaders to the nonshadered parts.

 

[Ekmek]

I suppose since Dido will probably be the toughest, I'll try and knock Solomon out really quickly. I'll check your guide but I might need some help adding shaders to the nonshadered parts.

ok. I may be able to help but i still IgorS some neck work

 

[The Capo]

Okay, I already have problems here. First of all the only unshadered part that I need to shader is the hair on Solomon. This is the first part of adding shaders in your guide:

First open you last nif file. Now open the original Firaxis model that you based it on. Now nifswap the Firaxis model onto your nif. You should have two bodies. NOTE: I did have some problems on a few leaderheads but not sure why. So it might be a good start to nifswap your old model onto the shadered Firaxis nif and save as a test nif. Then add the Firaxis model. After doing this I had no problems.

The first issue with this is that the only parts that match my base file are already shadered. So how do I shader an unshadered part that ISN'T part of the base-model?

 

[Ekmek]

copy the source of the hair (even if it includes a whole body) over to the base nif. or you can just skip that and in blender join the hair to the body - delete the hair's nonshader material properties. then separate the hair. then export and when you swap over the hair rename the texture files in nifskope.

edit: hope it works I'm done for the night

 

[IgorS]

ok. I may be able to help but i still IgorS some neck work

Did you see it already? This is a really weird thing.
There is another problem with Bismarck, BTW. When you nifswap it.

 

[The_Coyote]

sometimes a pic says more than thousend words

first you have to copy the animated light from sitting bull in your dido nif. Afterwards you can to the other steps

 

[The Capo]

Ekmek seems to be getting a little frustrated with all the questions, sorry Ekmek!

Anyway, I am having some trouble here. I couldn't get the Peter file swapped on to Solomon (there were way too many errors so it wouldn't let me, everytime I tried something a new error came up). So I figured I might as well try to swap Solomon's hair on to Peter, follow your steps, and then swap his hair back on to Solomon. Unfortunately as I was following your steps something happened.

I'm not sure how bad this is (or if it is even bad) but on p. 46 of your guide it says that it should read "2 Mat 2" and then I should delete one so it reads "1 Mat 1." Unfortunately mine says "3 Mat 1"

Now I have tried out different thing and I can successfully delete it so that it says 1 Mat 1, but I was just wondering if it was a problem that it didn't say 2 Mat 2 to begin with? Is it even possible to do it the way I am trying it? Here's a screen shot.