I can't recolor Shadowmere...?

[DaganEldr]

Hello! I've only JUST recently delved into the world of recoloring things in Skyrim. I have a character I'm using for a story, and for her specific role, she needs a specific horse. To get that specific horse, I figured "Oh, okay, I'll just extract Shadowmere's texture from the .bsa and make it ENTIRELY black in GIMP, and edit the eyes and saddle. No biggie".

 

How wrong I was! I've never had so much trouble recoloring anything within the world of gaming! You see, my saddle retexture came out entirely fine. It's Shadowmere being absolutely stubborn! He remains that same ole dingey brownish color (that I hate)! The eyes remain unchanged as well. I'm not talking about the glow, that's something I actually prefer.

 

I need a vampiric horse, and it seems Shadowmere is especially immune to vampirism (retextures). :I

 

So... I'll tell you how I went about this.

 

I extracted from the .bsa, edited it in GIMP, and exported the edited version to my desktop. From there, I copied the directory string (starting with the Data folder) WORD FOR WORD AND CASE FOR CASE, and placed the edited version in the new directory I made on my desktop. I then took that directory OFF of my desktop and merged it with my Skyrim Data folder.

 

The Saddle shows up fine! It's even in the same folder (they had the same directory in the .bsa)! But NOPE! Not Shadowmere's sleek new look!

 

Why is this? I'm about a good ten seconds from ripping my hair out over it! Is it because Shadow's technically an NPC, thus he may have something needing to be done in Creation Kit (which I'm a total newbie at)?

 

I'm at a total loss here, because oddly, the same thing is happening to some wig recolors I edited.

 

HELP! ANY info is MORE than appreciated!

 

(The following image shows what I'm talking about for the most part--Edited saddle, but untouched body.)

 

 

http://i1124.photobucket.com/albums/l571/PhantomFlamme/DaganFreeToRoam-1.jpg

Edited November 16, 2013 by DaganEldr

[Jeir]

If I remember correctly, Shadowmere shares the same texture as the default Whiterun horse. You'll need to change Shadowmere's texture path to point to a new texture.

 

I believe AlienSlof has already made a fully-black Shadowmere, though. Unfortunately she took it and her other horse textures off Nexus, but you can find it easily enough by entering 'AlienSlof' or Slof's Hive' into the search engine of your choice.

[DaganEldr]

If I remember correctly, Shadowmere shares the same texture as the default Whiterun horse. You'll need to change Shadowmere's texture path to point to a new texture.

 

I believe AlienSlof has already made a fully-black Shadowmere, though. Unfortunately she took it and her other horse textures off Nexus, but you can find it easily enough by entering 'AlienSlof' or Slof's Hive' into the search engine of your choice.

That would make more sense, but the texture path is what I'm still trying to understand. What do you mean by that, specifically? I placed the edited file in a separate folder structure that I made on my desktop. It was Data/textures/actors/horse/ and then the files. I took that Data folder from my desktop and merged it with the Skyrim Data folder in (C:). I'll show you the path I made.

 

http://i1124.photobucket.com/albums/l571/PhantomFlamme/editpath.png

 

 

 

Is there something else you were talking about when you mentioned the texture path?

 

Using someone else's mode is usually my last resort (Especially if there's something not quite the way I want it. I don't want to edit their work because it's theirs and not mine). I would LOVE to be able to learn how to retexture NPCs though for future references. So far, only armor and the saddle seems to appear edited. Nothing else. :/

 

Thank you for the direction though! I'll go have a look Slof's work regardless. :)

[Terra Nova]

No, unpack the meshes.bsa and grab the shadowmere.nif

 

You need shadowmere.nif to change the texture path in BSShaderTextureSet. This will also tell you which of those files in your screenshot you need to edit in order to change the color to black. I can tell you right now, it's not the sk file.

Edited November 17, 2013 by Terra Nova

[AlienSlof]

Once you have the shadowmere.nif, open it into nifskope where you can then edit the texture path. Out of the box, he just uses the horse04 texture because Bethesda were lazy.

 

In nifskope:

http://www.slofslair.co.uk/content/art/shadowmerenifskope.jpg

 

I've highlighted in blue which texture you need to change. Click the little flower icon then navigate to your texture. You can use the same technique to do his eyes. Then save. Now Shadowmere will use your own texture.

 

The way I learned was to take an existing mod that does what you want and to then dissect it into nifskope and the CS, to see how it was put together and how settings are utilized.

[DaganEldr]

Once you have the shadowmere.nif, open it into nifskope where you can then edit the texture path. Out of the box, he just uses the horse04 texture because Bethesda were lazy.

 

In nifskope:

http://www.slofslair.co.uk/content/art/shadowmerenifskope.jpg

 

I've highlighted in blue which texture you need to change. Click the little flower icon then navigate to your texture. You can use the same technique to do his eyes. Then save. Now Shadowmere will use your own texture.

 

The way I learned was to take an existing mod that does what you want and to then dissect it into nifskope and the CS, to see how it was put together and how settings are utilized.

Oh wow! I actually did manage to figure it out prior this post, but the method I used was far more complex. This certainly makes things easier for modding in the future though! Thanks!