Let's make The Fungal Forest Glow!

This is a tutorial on how to apply glow-maps to the mushroom caps of Spiffyskytrooper's The Fungal Forest and applying Pointythundra654's The Fungal Forest Retextures.

First, a big shout out to these guys for their amazing work in creating some of the coolest mods out there. Since I've downloaded their mods, they haven't left my load order and most likely never will. Just thought I'd spice it up a bit and share with ya'll how I did it. This is simply a tutorial on material manipulation and a simple greyscale glow-map .dds using one of the .dds files from The Fungal Forest Retexture. The glow-map .dds is in 4k.

Let's begin shall we..

Tools needed:
7zip
WinRAR
Material Editor 
Archive2 (Found in the Creation Kit)
FO4LODGEN - All Resources found here as well as step-by-step instructions by the very talented luxor8071! Be sure to pay very close attention to the instructions as well as the pictures like little check boxes, values, blah blah blah all that good stuff.
Fallout 4 Texture Resizer by FiftyTify! Used to change from 2k to 4k. I've tested this tool relentlessly and I must say.. "It Just Works.."
B.A.E While Archive2 can both extract and pack Ba2 files, B.A.E is very handy when trying to extract quickly and/or just taking a look 
inside the Ba2 without extracting in a clean user interface. Thank you Hexabit! I use this quite a bit.

Ok... Here we go..
- Download The Fungal Forest 4k manually and unzip. Drag the unzipped folder to desktop.

- Download The Fungal Forest Retextures manually and unzip. Drag unzipped folder to desktop.

-  Using Archive or B.A.E extract The Fungal Forest Ba2s into the same folder the Ba2s came from.

- The Retextures are loose files. The Hierarchy is as follows: Data/Textures/Landscape/FLORA/Shrooms **Bam! Rainbow in your face!**

- Let's trim away the fat:

 * Delete the ESP and fomod in the retexture folder. We don't need it. 

 * Delete the ba2s from the FF4K folder. We will be making our own. 
 
 * Open the Meshes folder inside the FF4K folder and delete the terrain folder. We will be building our own LOD. Leave the current LOD folder alone. 

 * Open the Textures folder inside the FF4K folder and delete the terrain folder. Leave the current LOD folder alone.

  - Now that we got the basic building blocks, open the retexture folder Data/Textures/Landscape/FLORA/Shrooms and pick 4 of your favorite .dds files.

   * Side note: I used 4 of the .dds files with the large circles (Mushroom caps) for the glow-map but I'm sure the other textures will work fine. I have not tested this so choose wisely.

   * My recommendations are choosing 4 from this list. Pick one for each type of Mushroom (Dark, Light, Normal & Radsoaked) and move them to the desktop.

ShroomNormal_Blue_d
ShroomNormal_Bluegreen_d
ShroomNormal_Bluegreen2_d
ShroomNormal_Bluelime_d
ShroomNormal_Blueorange_d
ShroomNormal_Blueorange2_d
ShroomNormal_Bluepurple_d
ShroomNormal_Bluered_d
ShroomNormal_Bluered2_d
ShroomNormal_Brown_d
ShroomNormal_Brown2_d
ShroomNormal_Darkblue_d
ShroomNormal_Darkbluemixed_d
ShroomNormal_Darkorange_d
ShroomNormal_Green_d
ShroomNormal_Green2_d
ShroomNormal_Greenorange_d
ShroomNormal_Greenpink_d
ShroomNormal_Lightblue_d
ShroomNormal_Lightblue2_d
ShroomNormal_Lightgreen_d
ShroomNormal_Lightpink_d
ShroomNormal_Lightpurple_d
ShroomNormal_Lime_d
ShroomNormal_Orange_d
ShroomNormal_Orange2_d
ShroomNormal_Peach_d
ShroomNormal_Peachblue_d
ShroomNormal_Pink_d
ShroomNormal_Pinkgreen_d
ShroomNormal_Purple_d
ShroomNormal_Purpleblue_d
ShroomNormal_Purplegreen_d
ShroomNormal_Purplemixed_d
ShroomNormal_Red_d
ShroomNormal_Teal_d
ShroomNormal_Yellow_d
ShroomNormal_Yellow2_d
ShroomNormal_Yellow3_d
ShroomNormal_Yelloworange_d
ShroomNormal_Yellowpink_d
ShroomNormal_Yellowpurple_d
ShroomNormal_Lightgreen_d

 - Now that you have your textures picked out, with each one allocated to a type of mushroom, we want to change them to the corresponding .dds textures in FungalForest/Textures/Landscape/FLORA/Shrooms. Rename them on the desktop first, then overwrite the .dds files. It must be exactly the same format or they will not overwrite.

-  Download the ShroomNormal_g.dds from this page and drop it into the texture folder. Do not rename it.

- Now that the textures are all done, let's move to the Materials folder inside FF4K Materials/Landscape/FLORA/Shrooms. There you should see 4 .BGSM files named... ohhh would'ga look at that..

- Still with me?

- Open Material Editor. click and drag one of the 4 .BGSM files into Material Editor. Let's use ShroomNormal.BGSM for an example.

- General does not get touched for any of the 4 files. Click on the Material tab. Here you will see 3 columns at the top for Diffuse, Normal, and Smooth Spec. The Paths should all be the same since you have renamed your chosen textures and have already overwritten the original texture files.

- In the Glow column you will need to add the following: Landscape/FLORA/Shrooms/ShroomNormal_g.dds (DO NOT FORGET TO ADD THE .dds AT THE END OF THE GLOW COLUMN OR YOUR NEW GLOWMAP WILL NOT WORK!)

- Following down the Material tab change the following:

 *  Enable Rim Lighting box. Rim power will appear at 2.00000. Leave as is. 

 * Backlight Power = 2.00000

 * Enable Subsurface Lighting box. Subsurface Lighting Rolloff will appear at 0.30000. Change to 2.00000

 * Specular Color must remain at the default 255-255-255 (Transparent) so the color you choose for glow will be exactly as you want.

 * Enable Aniso Lighting.

 * Enable Emittance. Emittance Color will appear.

    IT'S HERE! THE MOMENT YOU ALL HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR! Pick a color.... This is your time to glow..

 * I recommend correlating the color with the texture you chose.

 * Emittance Multiplier is the strength of the glow. I left this at the default of 1.00000. I did not want the glow to be overkill. This is personal preference. 

 * Moving down the list enable these last four boxes (External Emittance - Back Lighting - Cast Shadows - Glow-map) some may already be checked.

 * Always double check and be sure they are selected.

 - In the top left. File. Save as. It should still be named as the original .BGSM file name. Save to Desktop. Close Material Editor. Overwrite Original .BGSM in FF4K folder. 

ARE WE THERE YET? Buckle-up buttercup it's about to get real.. 

WE MUST REPEAT THOSE LAST STEPS FOR THE OTHER THREE .BGSM FILES AS WELL AS THE LOD .BGSM files. 1 DOWN, 7 TO GO

 - Open Material Editor back up and now throw in ShroomDark.BGSM. Same exact steps as before, making sure the glow column path remains set to Landscape/FLORA/Shrooms/ShroomNormal_g.dds. Do this for the remaining two (Light and Radsoaked)

 - Remember to change up the colors in the Emittance Color column for each .BGSM to give your new textures more diversity. Or not.. your choice.

 - Now.. We got all the textures & materials in our Landscape folders taken care. We need to do the same for the LOD folder.

 - Textures/LOD/Landscape/FLORA/Shrooms

 - Copy All 4 of your swanky new textures (Normal - Dark - Light - Radsoaked) from your Landscape Folder into your LOD texture folder. Delete the old LOD .dds files. Rename each texture to have "LOD" in front of the name. (e.x. LODShroomNormal_d.dds)

- Travel to Materials/LOD/Landscape/FLORA/Shrooms and you will find.. low and behold.. 4 LOD .BGSMs with the correlating names.

- Open up ole' trusty again and follow the same steps as you did earlier to apply the glow to each LOD .BGSM. I matched my Emittance colors to my landscape  .BGSM files. Just saying..

- Once you have all 4 LOD .BGSM files renamed and manipulated be sure to cut and paste from the desktop and overwrite the originals in the LOD folder.

Oh shit, we're done..  well sorta..

* Open Archive2.
* File. New.
* Format = General.
* Size = 4000 (I've personally tested size and 4000 is the sweet spot)
* Save string table (not sure exactly what this does or were it saves a string table to but the box has always been checked and never had problems)
* Compression = NONE (The only files that get compression are Textures)
* Hit OK.
* Drag only one folder at a time!
* Drag the FF4K Materials folder in to Archive2
* Drag the FF4K Meshes folder in to Archive2
* Hit File. Save as. name it. (FLORA - The Fungal Forest - Main) do not put .ba2 at the end, Archive2 will do it for you.
   Save to the same folder with the FF4K ESP  

   Next Step..

 * Hit File. New.
 * Format = DDS
 * Size = 4000
 * Compression = Default
 * Hit OK.
 * Drag the FF4K Texture folder into Archive2.
 * File. Save as.
 * Name it. (FLORA - The Fungal Forest - Textures) and save to the same folder with the FF4K ESP

NOW!.... You have two Ba2s and an ESP. Let's throw them into a neatly packed .rar file.

 * Open WinRAR. Double click the folder your Ba2s and ESP live in. Highlight all three. Up at the top, hit commands, hit Add Files to Archive.
 * Archive Name = The Fungal Forest (4K)
 * Compression = Best
 * Hit OK.
 * Add the newly packed .rar file to your mod manager and activate it.

Aside from regenerating your LOD you are FINISHED! You did it champ, way to hang in there.

Please go check out Luxor's excellent write up on how to generate LOD using F04LODGen

Remember! Every Step is very important, read carefully!

Have fun and enjoy your NEWLY GLOWING MUSHROOMS!

Credits:

Spiffyskytrooper - The Fungal Forest 4K

Pointythundra654 - The Fungal Forest Retextures

Ousnius - Material Editor

Hexabit - B.A.E. - Bethesda Archive Extractor

FiftyTifty - Fallout 4 Texture Resizer

Luxor8071 - FO4LODGEN - A Guide on How to Generate LOD