Graphic Artistry: Tips and Tricks

[InsanitySorrow]

Have any tips or little tricks up your sleeve when you're making textures?, Why not share them here and let others learn from your experience.

Content:

Quick Metal Ring

Using Official Texture Pack with replacers

[StarX]

Quick Metal Ring

Hello there!

You are texturing some leather boots and decide it would look good to add some laces to it. What do you need for that? Simple: laces of course! But hold on, where do the laces go? If you just drop them on the texture, it'll look like someone did a bad stiching job to hold the boots together. Ah, we need rings to put the laces through!

Google images is always handy for such things. What we're looking for is simple: a round metalic object. I just search on “copper button†and more than enough results fill up my screen. So why not just search for a ring instead? Well, we want to be able to control the thickness of the ring. It simply allows for more flexibility.

This is the image I have chosen to base my ring on:

With the Magic Wand Tool I select the empty parts, inverse the selection and copy and paste the button into a new document. Here I use the eraser tool with a hard round brush with an opacity set to 100% to make a perfect hole into the button. Easy, huh? And because I picked a button instead if a ring, I can make my ring as thick as I want it to be.

The inside of the ring looks a bit flat. So with the “Burn Tool†I darken up the inner edges to give it depth.

Finally I take a soft white brush with a low opacity to highlight the top of the ring to make it come more to life.

And we're done. We can now use the ring in the texture and put on some boots!

[DotDotJerk]

To use the High-Res DLC without it overwriting your manually installed textures:

In C:\Users\***\Documents\My Games\Skyrim\

*Path may vary based on Operating System*

Open the Skyrim.ini in notepad.

Add the following under the [Archive] tab:

HighResTexturePack01.bsa, HighResTexturePack02.bsa,

After the Skyrim - Textures.bsa

It should now look like this:

[Archive]

sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, HighResTexturePack01.bsa, HighResTexturePack02.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa

sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa

Save the .ini file!

Then, go into:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\skyrim\Data\

*Path may very based on Operating System*

and delete HighResTexturePack01.esp

then delete HighResTexturePack02.esp

Now skyrim will naturally load the textures as follows:

Skyrim - Textures.bsa - normally

HighResTexurePack01.bsa - replacing anything it can from Skyrim - Textures.bsa with files from this

HighResTexurePack02.bsa - replacing anything it can from Skyrim - Textures.bsa with files from this

And now you can use the High Res texture pack, in addition to your own manually installed textures. :3