An improvement on the vanilla version of Flame Atronach.
Permissions and credits
Author's instructions
Changes to vanilla mesh by sefmonsta, and I quote: "This mod uses Bethesda's original files, but all the changes were made by the mod author. You can use these files in other mods as you wish." I follow this policy for my files in this mod as well.
File credits
sefmonsta Todd Howard
Donation Points system
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Changelogs
Version 1.1
Atronach's normal map has been updated to 2k
Updated flame normal map
An improvement on the vanilla version of Flame Atronach. Now it looks like a solid flame, heating his armour to the limit!
I did not make any changes to the mesh and did not take textures from his replacer. So this can be considered both an improvement to vanilla Atronach and an update to sefmonsta's mod.
sefmonsta made maximum possible improvement of vanilla mesh:
The vanilla Flame Atronachs featured sequenced flame animations that were redundant, since animation effects don't work on skinned geometry (using translation or NiFlip controllers). This is due to skinned geometries requiring a normal-map to be present in order to work. Several ways were tried to get around this, but the fancy looking versions that worked in NifSkope didn't work in-game. So the approach has been to improve everything else, namely textures and normal-maps, UV mapping, material properties, removal of vertex-colour block and tweaking of glow-effect transition keys.
And this is where my work begins:
A re-upscale of Atronach's vanilla flame was made, as well as the normal map.
The glow map has been edited, now the glow is clear and strong, it is noticeable on the edges of the metal and on the overall intensity of the glow on the armour. It is now noticeable that atronach is so hot that he heats his armour to the limit. In vanilla it was a dim light without any depth.
The texture of the armour has been edited, a curve has been applied, thus the contrast has been improved. Also the shade of the heated elements of the armour has been slightly changed towards orange.
