shiny meshes for a dummy

[smokeyninja]

On the modding-openmw.com site the netch bump mapped mod https://modding-openmw.com/mods/netch-bump-mapped/ says it requires mesh editswith nifskope, there's 8 different NiTextureEffects that all point to textures\tx_creature_netch_ref.dds which doesn't fit with the guides at https://openmw.readthedocs.io/en/openmw ... _mods.html I wiped out all NiTextureEffect sections and quick testing didn't reveal any issues, but I'd prefer to avoid doing this multiple times with hundreds of mesh files... So basically, is it safe to just carte blanche wipe out any NiTextureEffect entries in mods that have shiny mesh issues or is that liable to lead to other issues?
I also noticed texture files in there with tx..._nm.dds name scheme and assumed I should rename those and adjusted the references in the meshes with nifskope accordingly. just wondering if that was necessary (good practice?) or if I just made more work for myself.

[lysol]

It should basically be safe to delete the NiTextureEffect blocks in any model you might encounter (probably with some exceptions where you actually want the NiTextureEffect block for something else than a normal map, but I can't think of any atm). You do not have to rename the _nm.dds path in the nif files. See this part of the guide:

...
6.Open up each of the models in NifSkope and look for these certain blocks:
• NiTextureEffect
• NiSourceTexture with the value that appears to be a normal map file, in this mod, they have the suffix _nm.dds.
7.Remove all these tags by selecting them one at a time and press right click>Block>Remove.
...

While not removing the _nm.dds path won't give any visual issues, they will give you errors in the log since you've renamed them to _n.dds and therefore the engine will no longer find them. OpenMW don't need the normal maps to have a defined path in the nif files, so it's no reason to keep that block anyway. Just remove it.

And yes, it is annoying to remove this stuff manually. If you know your way around with code, it's of course possible to automate this process. The thing with uploading patched versions of the meshes is just license. I wanted to convert a ton of mods and just upload them, but I soon realized that getting in touch with old modders from the past is next to impossible.