[Shared Normalmaps]

It is a roll of the dice I think. The game engine may or may not pick the _green as the _g glowmap or it might. You won't know for sure even if it works ok on your system, it might not on another. The only way to ensure it will work as designed every time is to make sure the game engine never has to guess...thus put a non-used character in front like "x" as I have mentioned.

 

And yes, I have had reports about a glow map being messed up because of this but no, I have not witnessed it myself. Once I heard about the problem, I have always stuck to a standard to avoid confusion.

 

LHammonds

[Blender - Custom Helmets for Oblivion]

You can find all of my tutorials posted on my forums. I do try to get as many out to various sites as possible but it takes a lot of time to get 'er done.

[Shared Normalmaps]

I have used shared normal maps and they can save a TON of space if you are providing a lot of the same armors and weapons in various colors (like the Vvardenfell Glass mod)

 

You might want to make one additional change to your procedure when using this method. Include a standard character after the underscore so you don't confuse the game engine as to the files purpose.

 

Example (Bad):

 

MyTex_red.dds - Red color map

MyTex_green.dds - Green color map

MyTex_blue.dds - Blue color map

MyTex_neon.dds - Neon color map

MyTex_n.dds - Shared Normal map

MyTex_g.dds - Shared Glowmap

 

The above example has several possible problems.

 

The game engine might see "MyTex_green.dds" as a glowmap file...just as if it were called "MyTex_g.dds"

It might also see "MyTex_neon.dds" as a normal map file...just as if it were called "MyTex_n.dds"

 

To avoid this, use a non-used character immediately after the underscore. I use the letter "x"

 

Example (Good):

 

MyTex_xred.dds - Red color map

MyTex_xgreen.dds - Green color map

MyTex_xblue.dds - Blue color map

MyTex_xneon.dds - Neon color map

MyTex_n.dds - Shared Normal map

MyTex_g.dds - Shared Glowmap

 

In the above example, it does not matter what you call the color maps since there will not be an issue with the _x in the filename (e.g. no confusion on the part of the game engine).

 

LHammonds