Guest Workshop: Retexturing Oblivion Part 01 By: DarkRider

[DarkRider]

Retexturing Oblivion: Part 01

A Basic Retexturing Workshop for Novices

By: DarkRider (03/22/09)

Hail Learner!

This workshop is designed to demystify the art of retexturing .dds files for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. First Let’s outline the tools you will need to complete this workshop and a few unfamiliar terms you need to know! Let’s get started!

What Tools Do I Need?

1) BSA Commander- A tool to open Oblivion’s texture archives

2) GIMP- A free photo editing software; comparable to Photoshop

3) GIMP .dds Plugin- A plugin that allows you to make changes to .dds files

4) GIMP Normal Map Plugin- A plugin that allows you to use the Normal Map utility in GIMP

5) NifSkope- A tool that allows you to alter meshes for Oblivion

6) The Construction Set v1.2- The tool that allows you to create plugins (mods) for ESIV: Oblivion.

*Note- If you are running version 1.0 of the game, you will need to patch your game with the Oblivion Patch v1.2.0416 or your mod will not show up in game!

What Terms Should I Know?

.dds =Means Direct Draw Surface: This is a type of photo file used in Oblivion

BSA = Bethesda Softworks Archive: This is a super compressed file that contains the game data

Mesh = A mesh is the model that makes up an object, think of it like the core of an object. A mesh is also sometimes called a NIF because meshes for Oblivion are called NetImmerseFiles and end in .nif

Texture = A texture is the skin of an object; it’s what you see in game!

Normal Map = If a mesh is the core and a texture is the skin that a normal map is the glue that hold the two together. A Normal map tells the game which parts of the texture have depth. Normal maps have the same name as their matching texture with _n added to the end and nearly every texture needs one!

Getting Started

Okay, now that you have your tools installed and ready to go and you have some lingo under your belt, let’s dive into retexturing! For this six part tutorial, we will be retexturing an upper class blanket from red/gold to silver/ blue. I will guide you step by step from unpacking the BSA archive to seeing your hard work in game and every step in between. This tutorial is designed for the absolute beginner, so feel free to skip ahead if you already know some of these steps!

Section 01: Unpacking the BSA

Let’s open the BSA Commander. When it’s open you’ll be looking at something like this:

If you’re not very PC savvy you may already be thinking “Oh…boy.” Relax. Everything new can seem overwhelming at first, but with some practice you’ll be flying through these steps with ease. First thing we need to do is “unpack” the blanket texture for our bed.

Click Open and navigate to your Oblivion Data folder, then click on the BSA called Oblivion – Textures – Compressed

Now, wait a minute or two for the entire archive to open up in the window. This may take some time for those of you on slower computers; it may even say “Not Responding”, just wait. Be patient. Once it’s open we are going to do two things. First, you’ll notice the check boxes next to the textures are all checked. Well, we don’t need all those textures, so let’s click the button Uncheck All. Second, at the top of the list you will see the category called Name. Click this category and all of the files will be alphabetized into an order you skim through with ease.

Once the list is organized this way, we can scroll through and find our blanket texture.

Smarty Says: Scroll carefully! Going too fast can make it “appear” that some things are missing, scroll quickly to the section you want, then more slowly until you find what you’re looking for!

Our blanket can be found under: textures\clutter\upperclass\blanket06.dds

Remember from our lingo section, almost every texture requires a normal map and you will need one too. Usually the normal map is below the texture in the BSA list, so we are ALSO looking for: textures\clutter\upperclass\blanket06_n.dds

When you find them, mark the check boxes next to each like this:

Now we’re ready to unpack. Press the button that says “Unpack”. An unpack window will open, but BEFORE we unpack, we need to tell the Commander where we’d like that file to go. Next to the line that says “Destination dir.” You’ll see a little button with three dots on it like this “…” click that. Another little window will open called “Browse for Folder” Indicate your desktop then click OK to set the desktop as your destination.

Smarty Says: If you don’t have a folder on your desktop called “textures”, BSA Commander will create one automatically when you unpack. That’s just what you want, so don’t get confused!

Once the destination folder is chosen, you’re ready to click “Unpack”

That’s it, you have successfully unpacked your texture and normal map, go ahead and close BSA Commander, but remember what you’ve learned, you’ll need it later!

Section 02: Retexturing in GIMP

Time to start up GIMP!

Begin by clicking File, mouse down and click on “Open” the Open Image box will appear and you can navigate to find your unpacked texture. Start at desktop then go to textures>clutter>upperclass> and you’ll find your texture blanket06.dds

Double click on the file to open it and this is what you should be looking at now:

This is the red and gold upper class blanket we’ve seen a dozen times over in the game. We’re going to change that in just a few steps. On the top of the image, click Colors the scroll down and click Hue-Saturation to open the Hue and Saturation tool. For those who don’t know, Hue is basically the color and Saturation is the depth level of that color.

The first change to the texture we’ll make is to change the gold to silver. Start by clicking the little button next to the Y (yellow) on the color wheel because yellow is the base color for gold. Once you’ve clicked that button, drag the Saturation slider all the way to the left to -100. This de-saturates the gold color putting it onto grayscale or silver.

Now we need to change the red to blue. To do this, click the button next to the R (red) on the color wheel. We don’t want to de-saturate the red we want to alter its hue to a new color. Grab the Hue slider and drag it to the left until it’s at -125. You now have a basic blue and silver texture and can click OK to close the Hue-Saturation box.

This is good, but for the best results, let’s shine it up a bit. Click on Colors then Brightness - Contrast to open a new window. Move the contrast slider up to 5 to give a bit more definition to the new colors. Then click OK to close the Brightness-Contrast box.

Now we’re ready to save, but before we can, we need to flatten the image. Vanilla textures from Oblivion have what’s called MipMaps. These are little layers of the texture. We want to make new ones for our new texture, but before we can, we need to get rid of the old ones from the original texture. Click Dialogs then scroll down to click on Layers to open the Layers box.

Right-click on the Main Surface and choose Flatten Image to flatten the old mipmaps out, then go ahead and close the Layers box.

Smarty Says: Some versions of GIMP do not have a "Dialogs" option. Instead you may have a category called "Windows" Click on that and scroll down to dockable dialogs to find the "Layers" option. See Example Image Here

Now we’re ready to save the new texture. On the Image, click File then scroll down and click Save As

The Save Image Window will open up. You need to NAME your new texture by typing a name in the name slot. I’ve called this texture “aaTestBlueBlanket.dds” You MUST add the .dds extension yourself by typing it in or GIMP will save it under a different and wrong extension!

When you click SAVE a “Save as DDS” window will open. There are two things you need to do in this window. First, choose the compression level. For a flattened texture, you need to choose DXT1. Second, you need to check the box “Generate MipMaps”. Click OK and the file will finish saving.

Congratulations you have successfully retextured your first Oblivion texture and saved it!

Continued In Part 02...

[Tigersong]

This one has version 2.8, which doesn't have a Dialogs tab. Where should he look instead?

Oh. The Layers are already open.

Edited October 5, 2012 by Tigersong