A How to on: Bounding Boxes and Multi-texturing: Nifskope

[IanBitterss]

I had problems with bounding boxes and collision for awhile, after searching for help I had only found resources stating you couldn't modify the bounding box for creatures, at least pertaining to Morrowind.

 

I found this out to be false, and seemed rather easy to do in Nifskope. So you have a bounding box for your creature and you have "havok" enabled under "render," so you can see you're bounding box, it will appear as a "line drawn box" around you creature. If you do not see one you must select you're bounding box node and open up the block details. You should see the translation, rotation, and ect settings. These are for the NODE itself. You will see a setting "has bounding box" set the boolean aka "bool" to yes. Extend the branch. You will now see the same settings, but with radius instead of velocity. This is where your bounding box is adjusted. In CONCLUSION: it seems to work best setting the node and bounding box node at the same translation/rotation, while only having radius and velocity different. I have not played with velocity.

 

TEXTURES: I also discovered some what confusing information on texturing. Nobody mentioned dark, detail, and decal textures. Using these take some practice, but are more useful then editing your main texture, and give you options to create different combinations for different looks.

 

Under NiTrishape in Nifskope right click on Texturing propertys, you will see options to add different kinds of maps. From my experience here is what I think about how they work;

 

The Dark Map is a texture that appears to work with all color, from black to white. The darker a color, the stronger it will show over you're base texture. Whites and light grays do little. White appears to do nothing. Black appears black. This could be used for grains in wood, scratches in metal or to tint a weapon blade, letting "shiny spots" remain shiny. I have used the same texture as my base for effects I couldn't create by editing the image itself.

 

For best results edit the UV map for each texture map. Select edit UV, go to coordinate slot, and duplicate. Then select texture slot, and select which map you wish to modify. Can be used many different ways.

 

Also wishes me to note that over scaling and using the built in tiling effect on UV maps shouldn't be frowned upon, it can help make small textures (128, 256, ect) appear better. Assuming their seamless for a lot of cases. I have had no graphical problems until you get into 2048+ sizes. And in most cases just appears to make the object the textures attracted to "jump around.". I have used the console feature "purge textures" to fix this. But has also caused crashed I suspect; from 10 to 60 minutes after the command. I have not had frame rate issues, and acually (and so unushally unexplainable) useing all large textures for land tiles for an area with none of other dimensions seemed to increase performance. Compared to "my 4096 cobblestone road texture" mixed with 512s. I don't know why, just appears true.

 

Detail Maps: Ok this is seems to act like the dark map with how colors appear, but affecting the alpha channel of the detail map. Lighter colors are more transparent, black and dark colors cover up what's behind it, less transparent. Of course black appears black. White appears white, but clear, so "adds brightening and highlights." You can use full transparency to see the base texture cleanly behind the detail texture. Can be used to create the same effects as the dark map, like grains of wood, or to enhance the look of wood itself my adding extra depth, and tinting at the same time. It takes experimentation.

 

Decals: Yup a sticker! A better alternative to add clear writing or patterns to your object. Using a sign for example, you could create a plain texture of wood, metal, ect and add a decal map for your writing. This way you can: select edit uv, go to coordinate slot, and duplicate. Then select texture slot, go to decal, edit the uv for you writing or picture show it appears properly.