Ask Basic Texturing Questions

[WillieSea]

Far houses are just that, far away, so a low res texture is all you need. Its quick to load, and takes very little processing power away from more important 'up close' objects.

[freewaydog]

I have done the painting retexturing tut, but I would like to know. How do I retexture tapestries? I want to retexture the item LowerClassTapestry01a/mesh lowerclasstapestryl02.nif, please help. Thanks.

[DarkRider]

You just unpack the existing texture, flatten it, recolor it (or paste a custom image on top), save as DXT1. Then make a normal map (same process as paintings). Retexturing is really similar no matter what object you are retexuring.

[freewaydog]

AH! Ok. Thanks.

[ZuTheSkunk]

I hope that the donnato is correct and it is more texture thing than mesh thing.

I have a mesh with two parts with two different textures that I want to merge (parts both of textures and meshes). I have noticed before that the DaMage has merged two textures by just placing them next to each one (making the texture 2x wider) and I wanted to do the same trick. But it seems that in editing of UV mapping this texture is squeezed to the square, making the current UV uncorrect.

So, to the point...

How to resize (squeeze in this case) the UV mapping on the object?

[freewaydog]

And here is what I got:

Page not found

But now that you're here, go ahead and search through the billions of photos, images and videos on Photobucket.

Hi folks, this is probably one of those simple things I`m just overlooking something with. I`m trying to alter this texture by recoloring and adding new alpha and normalmap. the first one worked just fine but the color turned out horrible. the next three trys were all bust and the "color to alpha" isn`t working.On the first one I set the alpha color close to the oeiginal instead of black as we`re told to do in the tuts.These last tries I`ve used black and it won`t work.

I`m shooting for a semi shiny metal surface. Here`s a screen of what I`ve got in the gimp...My link

[Hanaisse]

I hope that the donnato is correct and it is more texture thing than mesh thing.

I have a mesh with two parts with two different textures that I want to merge (parts both of textures and meshes). I have noticed before that the DaMage has merged two textures by just placing them next to each one (making the texture 2x wider) and I wanted to do the same trick. But it seems that in editing of UV mapping this texture is squeezed to the square, making the current UV uncorrect.

So, to the point...

How to resize (squeeze in this case) the UV mapping on the object?

You can change UV mapping either in Blender (mesh work) or in Nifskope. Highlight the texture area, right click, go to Texture - Edit UV, and play with it.

[ZuTheSkunk]

You can change UV mapping either in Blender (mesh work) or in Nifskope. Highlight the texture area, right click, go to Texture - Edit UV, and play with it.

Yes, I know about it (at least in NifScope, never tried that in Blender). But if I wish to just "squeeze" the UV mapping to fit the new, combined, wide texture, then what is the easiest way? DaMage made it in no time, so I guess there is some quick way...

Yeah, yeah... I guess I should ask him.

[Section_31]

Greetings, does anyone know why this object's texture appears...odd?

[TehBuddha]

Im not too sure Section_31... Probbably just accidentally placed.

Its easy enough just to deleti it in the CS though.

Also, I think you might have the wrong part of the forums here ;3

[DarkRider]

Greetings, does anyone know why this object's texture appears...odd?

Hard to say from that angle and position, could be a normal map flaw. If you position it against the wall like the other banners does it remain unaffected by the fog?

[vometia]

Greetings, does anyone know why this object's texture appears...odd?

Are you perhaps viewing it from the rear? I only ask as I had something similar when I placed a tapestry the wrong way around once... I sometimes see odd things that look much darker and more definite than they should, but I usually put it down to "one of those things", though I know it's much harder to be blasé about it when it's your own stuff!

[Section_31]

Im not too sure Section_31... Probbably just accidentally placed.

Its easy enough just to deleti it in the CS though.

Also, I think you might have the wrong part of the forums here ;3

Hard to say from that angle and position, could be a normal map flaw. If you position it against the wall like the other banners does it remain unaffected by the fog?

Are you perhaps viewing it from the rear? I only ask as I had something similar when I placed a tapestry the wrong way around once... I sometimes see odd things that look much darker and more definite than they should, but I usually put it down to "one of those things", though I know it's much harder to be blasé about it when it's your own stuff!

Hmmm...hardly, here's another picture, front and back view from a closer look.

As you can see, all the other objects appear normal but the large banners do not. Also, there are about nine other similar banners and only this one "misbehave".

[DarkRider]

Can you upload the texture and normal map to a PM so I can take a look?

[Section_31]

Can you upload the texture and normal map to a PM so I can take a look?

Done.

[The Vyper]

Got a question for you:

I'm working on multiple retextures of the same Shield mesh. If I place the new textures in the same folder and name them as follows:

Shield_Black

Shield_Blue

Shield_Jade

Shield_Red

Shield_White

Shield_g <---glow map

Shield_n <---normal map

will each mesh I make with them use the same glow map and normal map? If so, it would save me a lot of time.

[InsanitySorrow]

StarX covers that here, should work for glow maps too

[The Vyper]

StarX covers that here, should work for glow maps too

Thanks! I can't believe I missed that.

[The Vyper]

Okay, got a new question. How can I edit an existing texture to make it partially transparent? For instance, say I wanted to take one of the crystal textures from Meo's Ayleid Clutter and make it partially transparent. What steps would I take?

[InsanitySorrow]

You would take the main texture, add an alpha channel to it, White = 0 Transparency, Black = Full Transparency. So a nice shade of grey would work best.

Open the NIF you want to display the transparent texture, find the block for your texture (IE the part you want transparent), Right Click>Node>Attach property>NiAlphaProperty.

if you then add your texture you should see the mesh/mesh part is transparent.

[The Vyper]

You would take the main texture, add an alpha channel to it, White = 0 Transparency, Black = Full Transparency. So a nice shade of grey would work best.

Open the NIF you want to display the transparent texture, find the block for your texture (IE the part you want transparent), Right Click>Node>Attach property>NiAlphaProperty.

if you then add your texture you should see the mesh/mesh part is transparent.

Thanks! That got it, although I ran into what you might call a "gotcha". In the Block Details of the NiAlpha Property, there is a listing named "Flags". If the number in the "Value" column is not set to 237, the transparency effect will not occur.

Here is an image where the texture doesn't appear transparent. Note that the Flags value is 236. (you'll have to enlarge it to see that).

Here is an image where the very same texture does appear transparent. Note that the Flags value is 237. (again, you'll have to enlarge it to see that).

I tried multiple values and 237 was the only one that provided transparency.

[InsanitySorrow]

Ahhh I learned something new , You are correct, I just checked myself, all though if you add the NiAlphaProperty yourself or copy it from another mesh, the setting seems to be preset to 237.

Anyway something to take note of, thanks

[The Vyper]

Ahhh I learned something new , You are correct, I just checked myself, all though if you add the NiAlphaProperty yourself or copy it from another mesh, the setting seems to be preset to 237.

Anyway something to take note of, thanks

Yeah, that mesh already had a NiAlpha property, but "Flags" was set to 13036. I figured out the problem by comparing that NiAlpha property to the one used on the crystalball01 mesh. Now that I know how to make things transparent, I'm going to have a bit of...fun setting some things up.

Edit: Just learned the setting "Flags" to 4333 or 4845 will also work. According to Phitt, if you click the flag next to the "Flags" value, a menu pops up. There you can define the settings of the alpha property. Each of these settings has a number and all settings together make up the "Flags" value.

Edited October 3, 2010 by The Vyper

[GothGirlDanielle]

Question: Using larger textures

Last night I learned that if I wanted to increase the detail in my textures, I could increase the size - so long as they remained square. So Bethesda's plain wood texture is 512x256. It's "square" in the senses that one side, multiplied by 2, equals the other side.

Now if I increase the pixel size to increase detail ... say double the size ... then I end up with an image that is 1024x512. Of course, this looks much better, but is substantially larger. I use bitmaps (to prevent .jpg corruption) and now I'm over 1 mb per image (the original is 500k) - which seems much too large to me. Maybe for a unique sword or shield, but for something that will appear multiple times in a single cell - like a crate, for example - this could create quite a load on the computer.

Since I'm doing coffins, and since I'll be using upwards to 30+ coffins in a singe dungeon, this seems too big. In addition, I'll be adding some other new meshes as well. Should I just stick to the size of the regular Bethesda meshes?

~ Dani ~

Edited November 17, 2010 by GothGirlDanielle

[Artisanix]

Since I'm doing coffins, and since I'll be using upwards to 30+ coffins in a singe dungeon, this seems too big.

If those coffins use the same texture then such texture file is loaded into memory just once.

But if each coffin uses different texture file then all those files will be loaded into gfx card's memory.