Reflective armors

Reflective armors Author: Montegris

Modification that makes Blade, Dwarven, Imperial and Steel armors more reflective. The Steel armor has a darker texture and some diferent colors. It can be used with my other mod "Better window enviromental map" in order to get better results with the reflex.

The mod also change this armors from "Assorted Protective Female Armors by nuska"

There are three files: two main files (one that has more reflectiveness armors than the other) and one optional file that adds the right interior reflection to the armor, instead of the forest enviromental map of the exterior, your choice.

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INSTALLATION Just extract on the Data folder, or install it with BAIN

ABOUT MAKING THE SURFACE OF THE ARMOR REFLECTIVE Programs needed: NifSkope and Nvidia photoshop plugins

Making the properties of the armor reflective.

I Use NifSkope to edit the meshes properties (the .nif files): in the NiTriStrips / NiMaterialProperty i have changed the emissive color to something black, and the specular too (Emissive will be white if you want to use the glowmap). Then in the NiTexturingTexture i have changed to "APPLY_HILIGHT" the value of the "Apply Mode". This way the material of the object can reflect the light.

In order to make the object not reflect the exterior reflection at interior you must change the existing value for NiMaterialProperty to EnvMap2, if you want to look the same than at exteriors then leave it as it was or change to EnvMap

Making the surface that will reflect the enviroment

Here we have to edit the textures of the armors. First of all we are going to modify the alpha channel of the normal map (_n.dds files), you can do this with the Nvidia photoshop plugins, and photoshop. To apply the specularity we have to add and alpha layer on the layer channels, this layer in black and white is the map that make some parts to shine (white) and others to be opaque (black). A bright alpha map will make the armor to shine a lot, so be careful.

The next thing is to edit the diffuse map if you want, if your armor is gray or silver it works better to darken the diffuse, and the same for the red, blue, gree and brown colors; if it is gold don´t touch it. But at the end you will have to test and see if you like the results.

I have saved the normal maps as DXT5 ARGB with generated MIP maps.

I have gathered the information here and there, but i have to give credits for the information i read at http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Reflective_metal So, credits to Vagabond Angel for the original technique and then Jerros for the additional