Creating Normal Maps

[Riddleofsteel]

I was wondering if anyone could point me to a tutorial or software program that makes normal maps for existing .dds weapon textures. Thanks for any help.

[Skree000]

you want either Crazybump or Nvidia Texture tools for photoshop or GIMP.

[Riddleofsteel]

I've been puttering with Crazybump trial and it looks easy but for some reason when I do what I believe is the process to add a normal map and save the dds file, the weapon doesn't look any different in the game world.

 

Am I supposed to make a file with the '_n.dds' suffix and then change the texture properties in GECK? Or is there a nice tutorial somewhere that leaves nothing to the imagination? Thanks for your reply Skree000.

[Skree000]

when you assign textures in nifskope, make sure its via a specific node, the same one vanilla meshes use, i think its called BSShaderLightingNode or something, then its child node will be a BSTextureSet or something like that. Im at work atm so i cant recall the names offhand, but its just the same ones that vanilla meshes use in their nif files for textures. Usually goes, Material property-BSShaderLightingnode->Texture Set.

 

Anyways, point im getting at is in the texture set, make sure the first in the six-slots for textures is your Color/diffuse map. Usually just named >object<.dds.

In the second slot below that goes your normal map, usually named >object<_n.dds (ie. Cabinet_n.dds)

 

It will look at your normal map and extract its alpha channel and use that as a spec map, (specular = shiney-ness basically)< so make sure your specular map goes in the alpha of that texture so it can be located and used properly by the engine.

 

Bottom line is i can only think of 2 reasons why a normal map wouldnt show up in game.

 

1. Normal map is not correctly made or named incorrectly

2. Nif File for the desired object is not correctly made or contents are not arranged or named properly.

[SpeedyB64]

In the GECK texture sets can also be used:

 

Go to miscellaneous (I think) and select texture sets,

make a new one and name it something you will remember.

In the texture set choose your textures (diffuse map (colour) at the top, normal map in the second slot)

Then go to your object in the object list and open up its settings, you should see the model selection button.

Click the model selection button and it will display the model properties window (will have a list of all the model's parts)

Double click on the part you want to re-texture and select your texture set, then it should use your new texture, yay! :biggrin:

 

Hope that helps :thumbsup: