hello mardonius
There are several textures midsole seems to allow - I did once set up a definitive test to see how they all rendered, then lost interest and went back to eating worms or whatever it is I do. You should be able to attach a glow texture to models; again, I can’t tell you how effective this is and what it does in terms of eye-candiness, but these are part of the NiTexturingProperty of the mesh There are also two settings.
There’s a second bunch of stuff (a technical term only us professionals employ) under NiMaterialProperty. I think you are aware of this - you can fiddle with tiny maddening clickers and alter the ambient, diffuse, speculative, and emissive properties of the mesh. Almost every bit of civ4 art is 111 111 000 000. When tantanmen and I were fiddling with non-civ4 imports, they had different values: always a bit darker. My conclusion was - and remember I eat worms - other game environments are very well lit, and the models we are using normally have really important bits of them disabled (it’s easy working with no shaders rather than shaders). There is also a glossiness setting here … aaaaaaannnndddd I can’t remember what it does, not an awful lot, I did test it a bit when I wasn’t so distracted by annelids. and I have idea it is actually inverse, so 100 is dull as my glue-sniffing damaged brains and 1 as shiny as my worn Doctor Martens. I *do* have an issue atm with a rather shiny bit of unit art … now this has an environment light on a weapon; this shouldn’t be the probllem as it is stuck on one node with a shield. The main body of the unit *does* have an unusually high emissive setting in the NiMaterialProperty of 111 (Red, Green, Blue so white effectively), usually 000 as I said; originally it was an armoured knight sort of thing, and I repurposed it as an unarmed horseman sort of thing. I’m going to change this (making it apparently black, non-emissive: what does it mean eh?) and get back to you, but you might like to have a fiddle with this setting and see if it’s what you want; the glossiness here is ‘10’ pretty much a default civ4 setting, so I suspect this isn’t the issue Let me know if you need further help, and realise even after years I am a total amateur. It’s gentleman and players, mardonius. No real aristocrat wants to be seen trying that hard. Also I don’t do Blender … it’s like piano accordions, mardonius. At best, a gentleman might know how to play one … but choose not to do so. And certainly not because I’m too lazy and stupid to learn.
Finally the NiMaterialProperty settings - I think they can be used for more subtle effects, focusing on maybe (if you so choose) on a hint of red, or a shinier but not really obvious grey glow. Again, I’m still struggling adding warrior with leopard shorts_128 skin from 2008 or whatever. Keep us up to date on your experiments and findings, it’s all grist to the mill.
