-Help Needed- Recolouring a Daedric weapon.

[AJay22285]

Hi guys, I'm getting fairly familiar with messing around in retexturing and modding etc on Skyrim now, so I decided to try modding an existing Daedric sword with yellow instead of red. I assume its just changing the glow some how judging on what I can see anyway. I've ripped the files out of game (displayed below) and can't seem to see what needs changing from red to yellow? Am I missing another file?

 

The pictures show me viewing in gimp but I also am familiar with PSP and Photoshop, any guidance would be appreciated :)

 

Thankyou :)

 

 

[Lord Garon]

If you just want to change the color from a red to a yellow, just do the texture file (yes, there is red in that file, look closely or use the color tools to see it) first and leave the glow and normal maps alone until you test it in-game. First, copy the texture file and maps and save them under different names to have originals. I don't remember GIMP that well, but you may have to import the texture .dds as a native GIMP file or jpg (some layered rgb format that supports editing), change the color curves/levels to get the colors you want, then save as a dds with mipmaps.

 

Try it in-game, or in NIFScope, to see how it looks; outside, inside a structure/ruin/cave/etc, and in both light and darkness. Gently change the the glow map, if necessary, and test again. I usually use layers to tweak images, but the curves and level tools work well if you're careful to maintain the overall image density and contrast. You may not have to generate a new normal map. If you haven't generated a normal map before, google for the process; GIMP's normal map filter by itself does not make an optimized normal map for Skyrim.

 

Don't forget to test indoors and out; you may be surprised at the difference.

[AJay22285]

Hey Lord Garon, thankyou for trying to help :)

I assume you meant the little bit of red on the far right file (_n file) on what looks like to be the handle of the image?

[Lord Garon]

No, no, no... the _n file is the normal map; you don't really edit those, you re-create them AFTER changing the base texture file. Normal maps are used to generate the illusion of 3-D surface detail, not colors. Base textures have no trailing underscore in them. From your pic, it looks like your base texture file is daedricsword.dds; that's the one to change colors in. A texture loaded into a graphics program will NOT look like it does in-game. There is a bit of an art to modifying the texture file and getting the exact, desired result in-game. Usually, its edit, test, edit, test, ...

 

Don't mess with any filenames containing an underscore yet. Save your original files first. Load daedricsword.dds into GIMP with mipmaps UNCHECKED, or import it as a GIMP file. Edit your colors (don't change the size or layout of the image) and then save it as .dds with mipmaps enabled. Test your change in-game. Repeat if necessary.

 

Glow maps have an _g in the filename. They are B&W images which cause an item to glow-in-the-dark (be emissive) in areas where the glow map is lighter.

 

I would google for a re-texture tutorial, especially for generating normal maps; there are several images associated with an object's in-game texture (base texture, texture for dropped items, glow maps, normal maps, uv maps, etc) and there are issues of image compression to obtain the very best textures. It's really beyond my capability to give detailed re-texture advice. However, you should be able to make basic color changes without having to modify anything else and still have them look good in-game. Don't be dissuaded; make sure you have copies of the original files, then just go for it. If you can't see the colors in the original .dds image, make a big color change and see what it looks like in-game. You can mess with the colors a lot and the game will display it without crashing or locking up. You can always restore the original files.

Edited June 19, 2013 by Lord Garon

[AJay22285]

Thanks again for your help here Lord Garon but the colour of the glow on the Daedric weapon must come from somewhere else because I've messed around with this a lot and everything but the colour glow hasn't changed. It looks like its another file coming from elsewhere because if I load up 3dsmax I can select it and its called DaedricSwordGlow. If my knowledge using max was better I might be able to find the source of where its coming from. Everything else I've re-coloured is also showing up nicely in max :)

[Lord Garon]

Okay, I'm getting the gist of your issue and I am not able to answer your question. I can mess with "basic" textures, but I checked out the daedricsword.nif in NIFScope and that sword NIF includes a textured trishape (mesh) called DaedricSwordGlow with shader effects attached to it. There are two additional textures attached to the DaedricSwordGlow trishape effects shader and I have no idea how they affect the glow or its color. However, there is an Emissive Color parameter for the effects shader; if I were to be playing around with your issue, I would change that value and see what happens. I do not know how the Emissive Color setting is reflected in any associated texture image for the effects shader, or if it even has any image parameter correlation at all. I can't tell if a change to one of those two texture images would implement the change you are looking for.

 

You have to be very careful here: you DO NOT want to change values in the default daedricsword.nif file unless you have good backups of the original. I would create a new daedricsword object in the CK and play with that NIF file in NIFScope.

 

I apologize for assuming some things when I first read your post; I assumed the sword had a simple glow map effect. I cannot factually answer your question. Sorry.

Edited June 19, 2013 by Lord Garon

[Lord Garon]

Ajay,

 

Did you ever resolve your issue? Just curious.

[AJay22285]

Hey bud :smile:

Well I got a wep with a yellow glow off the nexus but even with that and investigating the glow files in NifTools I still never found what actually causes the weapon to glow... annoying really as I wanted to learn stuff from doing this lol

So yes the problem is solved but my goal not achieved if you like xD

Thanks for all your help though was nice to have some help :smile:

Think I'm just going to start right from the beginning next and model something.

Achilles' shield including the proper size I think is my next mission :smile: