Weird Facial Texture Issue

[Mannimagnus]

I'm making a race mod with high resolution textures (4096x4096) The ears, body and face are all done with normal maps.

The ears and body work fine, the face, however, does not.

The normal map is not the issue, I tested this by using the unmodified face texture with my normal map, it works fine.

The only difference between the unmodified face texture, and my modified face texture, is I decreased the saturation by -62, increased the brightness by +37, and increased the contrast by +5. A simple colour/tone edit.

So the only difference between the textures is one is pale and the other not, the one that is not pale works fine, with the pale texture I created (I saved the unmodified one in the same format) I got this in game:

Why is the texture that I simply made pale go black like that?

[Hanaisse]

It looks like an alpha channel issue, based on the specific black locations. Did you remake one when you redid the normal map?

[Mannimagnus]

I had to convert an image into the texture. I used this:

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36871

And so yes, I had to make the normal map and alpha channel myself, I coloured the alpha to white, normal mapped it 4 sample with wrap checked, and saved it DXT 5 with mipmaps generated. For the texture itself I generated mipmaps and saved it DXT 1.

Edited June 8, 2011 by Mannimagnus

[Hanaisse]

A white alpha is going to give you a very high shine. Try a gray shade see if that makes a difference?

And just to make sure I'll state the obvious, but I know you know this. The .dds and the _n.dds filename are the exact same?

[Mannimagnus]

Ok, i'll try with a grey shade.

And yes, pretty much, I have two textures sharing the normal map. e.g.:

H06DManniPale_F.dds

H06DManniPale_M.dds

H06DManniPale_n.dds

Its allows for textures to share a normal map, I modified meo's welkynd textures to do this for my welkynd statuettes to reduce file size.

EDIT:

No improvment, its not the normal map, I used it with another face texture saved in the same format as my retexture and it worked fine, it just doesn't like my pale retexture for some reason, even though it will accept my other pale retextures.

Edited June 8, 2011 by Mannimagnus

[Hanaisse]

If you want to PM me the textures I'll take a look and double check for you.

[InsanitySorrow]

And yes, pretty much, I have two textures sharing the normal map. e.g.:

H06DManniPale_F.dds

H06DManniPale_M.dds

H06DManniPale_n.dds

Hmmm I don't think it's picking up the normal map, to make two textures share the normal map they need to be named something like this:

H06DManniPale_01

H06DManniPale_02

H06DManniPale_n

Take a look at StarX's tutorial, it's explained more

[Hanaisse]

Hi Manni,

Played with these textures for awhile, the 'original' worked at first, then it turned black like the 'pale' - not sure what happened there, it was weird.

What I finally ended up doing is remaking your normal map, the way I like to do it in PS, and it works for me. I've sent you my files, give it a try. I honestly couldn't tell you where it all went wrong but hopefully it's fixed now.

[Mannimagnus]

Its working!

IS, by the looks of StarX's tutorial I should have been alright, but just incase I went with "the old way" and gave each texture its own normal map, Hana's normal map, and its working!

So either my normal map was not being picked up by both textures or wasn't working properly, either way its working now!

Thank you both so much!

:cookie4u:

[InsanitySorrow]

Nope, that way wouldn't have worked , It's why I mentioned it

Glad it's working, Hana did all the hard work, she deserves the cookies.

[Hanaisse]

So glad to hear and you're very welcome