What causes shiny hair?

[Legacy_Malagant]

               

I was curious about this because I know that while certain BW heads display it (pfh0_head051 and pmh0_head021 for instance, I presume because they are intended to be their Aasimir), many do not yet nearly every head I've done myself seems to display it.

 

Is there some setting I am missing or perhaps a quick edit I can make via notepad to get rid of it or at the very least lessen the shine?

 

Thank you in advance for any guidance.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_kalbaern]

               

A diet rich in protein, especially from eggs can result in "shiny hair" ... or is that just for dogs?

 

Sorry I can't be more helpful, but ... I just couldn't resist. '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               

No problem. It gave me a good chuckle. '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ia.Pepper]

               

I don't know how a head would get rid of shininess without some other strange implications, because it is tied to the color you are using I believe. It is why it seems, when you use the expanded color palette for hair, it doesn't appear to be shiny.

 

What causes it is transparency, except instead of being transparent it picks up an environment map texture, which gives it a shiny appearance. Same goes for why you see strange shiny borders on certain things, because where the shiny texture is, is supposed to be 100% transparent, but it wasn't set up correctly or NWN doesn't agree with your mortal desires.  '>

 

Beyond that, I don't think I can be of any help.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               

That's what boggles me. Plt has transparency by nature but I assumed that this is a non-issue when the image being used has full opacity. I can certainly live with it but I just figure there must be some indicator somewhere since many heads don't. I don't think any players of mine take note, or they just assume people in our games just have lustrous hair and good salons.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ia.Pepper]

               

Maybe their hair is just REALLY oily?  '> I believe you would have to edit the hair colors directly to remove shiny hair, but it would also do it to all heads, not just select ones. As to how you do that, I don't know precisely. Honestly, I really don't think it would be a loss if shiny hair was completely gotten rid of, it does kind of look weird at times, and can kill a lot of detail in the texture as well.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Carcerian]

               

Yes, and since shiny textures are also prone to transparency errors etc on more and more computers, would def be nice to remove from assets whenever possible in general...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               

pal_hair01.tga - The alpha layer controls shininess. To get rid of shininess you'd have to edit this file to remove the alpha layer (or turn it solid white), though you could go with a lighter grey just to tone it down a bit.

 

However, from my testing, alterations to this and other plt palette files (hair, skin, etc.) only work in the player's override folder, not from a hak.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               

Thank you Amethyst. That is an odd choice that they went with. I'm not sure when I first noticed it (it's been years) but I don't seem to recall it always being that way. I could be wrong.

 

It wasn't a big deal to me all this time until I started really getting into my own crafts and conversions; now it drives me nuts.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               

The appearance.2da controls whether characters are shiny or not. You can't turn it on or off for any body part or armour piece without doing so for all of them. Except cloaks, which have their own .2da setting.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               

I know about the envmap setting, I just don't get why opaque hair displays as if it had transparency within the actual texture as metal pieces do. That's the part that was driving me nuts. Now that I know nothing can be done, I can (try) to blow it off or ignore it. At the very least, I can stop wasting time trying to do anything about it.