Mesh Works Fine in NifSkope but is BLACK in Oblivion!

[ClaytonM123]

I created a mesh + textures for an Oblivion static object. But when I try to see it ingame, it appears solid BLACK with zero reflection.

 

• It appears fine in the Construction Set, but when I press A and turn off the lights it appears solid black with no reflections.

• There are no Normal Maps, because I do not know how to apply them to the .NIF. Here is a screenshot of my NifSkope:

[Oblivionaddicted]

I never created any normal map but this site https://www.cgdirector.com/best-normal-map-generators/ should be useful.

[Pellape]

Creating basic normals are easy and the reason your mesh is black, is that lack of the normal map. I use Gimp and a normal map plugin but you can also make them online at several sites. I can link it to you if you wanna use gimp or if you use gimp already.

 

Lets say that texture you are using is called wood.dds and when you save the normal map you call it wood_n.dds and it gets loaded automatic by Oblivion.

 

The underscore is special for Oblivion files. let me make an example: lets say you have that wood texture in 4 different hues in 4 separate files and you want to use a single normal map for all 4?

 

wood_one.dds

wood_2.dds

wood_Three.dds

wood.dds

 

The game will now look for a normal map called:

 

wood_n.dds

Edited June 19, 2022 by Pellape

[ClaytonM123]

Creating basic normals are easy and the reason your mesh is black, is that lack of the normal map. I use Gimp and a normal map plugin but you can also make them online at several sites. I can link it to you if you wanna use gimp or if you use gimp already.

 

Lets say that texture you are using is called wood.dds and when you save the normal map you call it wood_n.dds and it gets loaded automatic by Oblivion.

 

The underscore is special for Oblivion files. let me make an example: lets say you have that wood texture in 4 different hues in 4 separate files and you want to use a single normal map for all 4?

 

wood_one.dds

wood_2.dds

wood_Three.dds

wood.dds

 

The game will now look for a normal map called:

 

wood_n.dds

 

Wow dude, thank you so much. I really needed this help. Just one more thing:

 

So no need to go into NifSkope? Just create a normal map with '(name)_n.dds' in the same folder and it is completely automatic?

No need to add in new 'blocks' into NifSkope??

[Pellape]

Nope. Yoiu only need to specify the standard texture inside each NiTriShape or NiTriStrip, if that is not done already properly. We also have a 3rd type of texture, but I have not figured out how to make them really as they are not save in DXT1, 3 nor 5 it seems, but like 32 bits TIF?? Well it is the glow maps I am refering too. They are not used much, only at glass items as far as i know.

 

So a glass item, like the glass arow has:

 

texture.dds

texture_n.dds

texture_g.dds

 

so the _g.dds will glow at the light parts and not at the dark parts. When i make glass, I do not use _g.dds, as I change the property of the item glow in NifScope instead. Anyway, there is nore than just one way of oing stuff. The Skyrim meshes seems to have the normals added in each property though. We can add them in Oblivion meshes as well, but it is not necessary.