Shell texture tutorial (how to blur a material)

How to make a shell mesh:

• Import the base mesh into Blender.
• Enter edit mode and delete all unnecessary

Blurred vertices of extraneous parts. This may be teeth, claws, eyes, lower claws (with

Too much fluff) etc. 3. Enter object mode and press the modifier (wrench). 4. Click Solid on the menu.

• Adjust curing (you may need to move forward or backward to

Make the grid thicker). I adjusted it to 0.05 but you can

Adjust it to your liking.

• Export the shell mesh. Make sure not to edit or destroy the UV map during this process.
• Do this 3-5 times or more, depending on how blurry you want it to be.

• Copy the base branch of the body and paste it under 0 BSFadeNode. Import the shell mesh on top of the pasted branch.
• Make the pasted branch points point towards the shell texture.
• Attach an alpha property (right click on the niishape of the pasted branch, go to Node >> Attached Properties >> nialphaproperty). Right click on the alpha property and go to flags.
• Edit the Alpha test threshold flag.
• With alpha test threshold flag more or less blur coverage per shell (depending on number).
• Set the least thick shell mesh (your first mesh) to a number slightly higher than the base, but set the smallest mesh in the shell mesh to the lowest. Check "Enable Blending" to make the fuzz smoother (but less loud).
• Repeat the above steps for all shell meshes, importing them in order from the thinnest shell to the thickest shell. For the Alpha test threshold, you can increase each grid by 5-20 or more. The base should be lowest and the thickest shell should be highest.

Update: 8. If you want to enable blending for the shell texture, change the alpha flag to 4845 (the threshold can be 0 or higher). Then go into BSshaderproperties and check SLSF2_Assume_Shadowmask. Do this for each shell mesh you want to blend. This should resolve any issues where the mesh may not respond correctly to lights when blending is enabled.

How to make the shell texture:

• Open the texture and slap a black and white filter on it.
• Adjust brightness/contrast to your liking.
• Add a new layer and blacken out the art you don't want blurred. You don't have to do this if you delete those parts on the shell mesh.
• Select all, copy and merge, then paste into the Alpha channel under Path.
• Turn off all adjustments and go back to your base texture, then save as mobname_shell.dds.