Solution for the red glowing skin problem?

[Asterra]

I'm kinda surprised that I couldn't find anyone asking about this with the search function. Google search is, of course, rife with questions about the red glowing skin issue.

I'm talking about this, of course:



For Skyrim users, the fix seems to be as simple as changing a variable in enbseries.ini. But "SkinSpecular" doesn't exist for FO3/FNV.

Okay, so it's related to the specular map, and seems to be the same kind of issue that cubemaps cause (which also doesn't have any solution in the .ini), i.e. literally anything above absolute zero causes a glow, no matter how dark the environment is.

You would think, therefore, that a "fix" might be to completely flatten out or turn off the specular map for skin, from within the model's mesh. But this actually has no effect whatsoever. For some reason, skin glows red, and I can't sort out a way to keep this from happening.

[ENBSeries]

As nobody answer, i can just tell that don't know any reason why mod can do this, so are you sure it happen only with enbseries installed?

[Asterra]

As nobody answer, i can just tell that don't know any reason why mod can do this, so are you sure it happen only with enbseries installed?

Yes, absolutely. I thought this was pretty common knowledge. As I noted before, whenever Skyrim users bring it up (herehttps://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/com ... _skin_bug/ and herehttps://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php? ... uzzy-skin/, for example), folks who figured out the problem tell them it's related to subsurface scattering, or specular, such as herehttps://www.loverslab.com/topic/127579- ... n-to-glow/. In the latter case, setting EnableSkinSpecular=false solves the problem.

I actually had this problem years ago in Skyrim as well, so I'm glad there are options for addressing it now. Just wondering what might be done to tackle it in FNV. Here's a comparison I just made:

[ENBSeries]

Skin specular have nothing to do with that bug and applied only when complex particles enabled. Skyrim links do not have anything in common with your problem, absolutely different engines and mods. I do not apply anything which could generate that red thing and i did test now disabling all the code, except increasing intensities, it's vanilla game do, maybe fake sss attempt.

[mindflux]

Do the relevant meshes have any special special shaders applied, like those in Skyrim that are controlled by the Lighting Effect parameters such as the fake SSS Boris mentioned?

[ENBSeries]

Nope, i have seen this on the vanilla body of main character. Just set direct light intensity to zero and ambient zero, then raise brightness. Its vanilla "feature", just can be seen cause mod allow to tweak parameters which usually hide it.

[mindflux]

Alright, too bad. It does look something like the poor man's SSS attempt in Skyrim so I'm kind of surprised that there's no _sk texture for it like in Skyrim or some other way to control its intensity.

[Asterra]

I do not apply anything which could generate that red thing and i did test now disabling all the code, except increasing intensities, it's vanilla game do, maybe fake sss attempt.

Yes, I suspect it's the vanilla game doing something. That's fair. Here for example is a screenshot of the same spot I took on a 100% clean install of FNV on a separate PC, with no mods and no mod manager—just FNV and ENB:



The red glow effect can be subtle. In this case, I needed to lower both lighting and ambient lighting intensity to 0 (from the ENB settings in the ENB 0.451 archive) to make it obvious.

The problem is that ENB is magnifying the red glow tenfold, so that it stops being subtle and starts being something that raises questions. Or, maybe more accurately, it treats all such effects as though the local brightness is 100%, which happens to make them look like they're glowing when the environment is actually dark. You may recall that ENB does the same thing with cubemaps and other environmental effects, so you can get things like this:



There actually are ways of controlling the above problems, of course. Those meshes have the "Environment Map Scale" flag and tweaking it can adjust the severity of the cubemaps.

But ENB does the same thing with emissive meshes, multiplying the glow of things like ground fog:



The above is an example of an effect that isn't categorized as Particle, Fire or Light Emitter, so it's always that bright, no matter the settings. Maybe the skin phenomenon is the same sort of thing.

[Asterra]

Alright, too bad. It does look something like the poor man's SSS attempt in Skyrim so I'm kind of surprised that there's no _sk texture for it like in Skyrim or some other way to control its intensity.

There are _sk files but they don't seem to do anything at all. Removing them from the mesh or replacing them with pure black or pure white has zero effect on the end result. Outside of redefining the mesh as something other than "SKIN_SHADER", there's no way to kill the red glow. What I'm after is hints on what I might tweak so as to counterbalance the fact that ENB treats the glow as though it's in 100% daylight even if it's pitch black.

[ENBSeries]

ENBSeries do not magnify anything, that red thing remains the same as it was. It's your set of parameters do it. You can't set ambient and lighting in vanilla game to zero to notice it, with enb you can.