SteelRat1962 Posted September 6, 2023 Share Posted September 6, 2023 Hello All, I'm very familiar with making texture replacements in Fallout 4, but the ones I'm doing for Starfield all seem either too dark, or washed out. I'm using paint.net, and tried messing with the exposure and saturation settings, but still cannot get them to look as vibrant as the original textures. Any tips on how to do these Starfield textures properly? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteelRat1962 Posted September 12, 2023 Author Share Posted September 12, 2023 Anyone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
americanakita Posted September 13, 2023 Share Posted September 13, 2023 Anyone?I have trouble with it myself, the "normal".dds is the thing that's washing out most of the color. It is something overlaying the actual color file that determines how shiny, dark, bright, etc. the colors may be. It's very touchy to alter too and annoying. I've noticed some other mod creators seem to be using some kind of tool to alter it, although I'm not sure what. Altering it yourself by-hand with paint tools is very touchy and the color can change wildly from just editing a few pixels. It is very easy to just strip away the whole texture overlay though if you just want it to be very bright and that's your only goal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteelRat1962 Posted September 14, 2023 Author Share Posted September 14, 2023 Thanks for the reply. It was my understanding that Normal maps were akin to displacement maps. I didn't realize they change multiple aspects of an image. What do you do to strip away the whole overlay? Can I make an essentially blank normal map? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nethermind2020 Posted September 16, 2023 Share Posted September 16, 2023 Normal maps are essentially vector maps that affect lighting. The colours are very specific and generally derived from baking a high resolution models to fake those details on a much lower and simpler model. Each colour in there corresponds to an angle that affects how the surface detail is lit. You can't really paint details with colour by hand, or shouldn't, you have to generally model the detail "physically" and use software to bake that high detail to a simpler model and that generates the normal map. It's VERY precise so if you do paint it by hand or even shift the colours by a little bit, the angle of the lighting on the surface will change and mess with how those surface details are lit. It's NOT a displacement map. (which is greyscale) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanLightning Posted September 17, 2023 Share Posted September 17, 2023 (edited) Hello All, I'm very familiar with making texture replacements in Fallout 4, but the ones I'm doing for Starfield all seem either too dark, or washed out. I'm using paint.net, and tried messing with the exposure and saturation settings, but still cannot get them to look as vibrant as the original textures. Any tips on how to do these Starfield textures properly? Thanks!What maps are you editing? Try just editing the color maps. It could also be the color profile you're using in Paint. You need to be using a srgb color profile and you need to be outputting to an srgb profile as well. I use Photoshop. Gimp is probably better for texture editing than Paint but just guessing. Edited September 17, 2023 by RyanLightning Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteelRat1962 Posted September 17, 2023 Author Share Posted September 17, 2023 What maps are you editing? Try just editing the color maps. It could also be the color profile you're using in Paint. You need to be using a srgb color profile and you need to be outputting to an srgb profile as well. I use Photoshop. Gimp is probably better for texture editing than Paint but just guessing. I'm mostly editing the color files for posters and paintings. I had been using Bc3 Linear Dxt5, for no real reason except that's what I used to used to Fallout 4. I saved a couple with BC3 SRGB DX10+, and it makes a HUGE difference! Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sabbath7991 Posted September 19, 2023 Share Posted September 19, 2023 The color files use bc7 srgb dx11 compression and normal maps use bc5 snorm compression Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteelRat1962 Posted September 25, 2023 Author Share Posted September 25, 2023 BC3 seems to work fine. I can't tell a difference, in-game, between BC7 and BC3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PrometheusTS Posted September 26, 2023 Share Posted September 26, 2023 What maps are you editing? Try just editing the color maps. It could also be the color profile you're using in Paint. You need to be using a srgb color profile and you need to be outputting to an srgb profile as well. I use Photoshop. Gimp is probably better for texture editing than Paint but just guessing. I'm mostly editing the color files for posters and paintings. I had been using Bc3 Linear Dxt5, for no real reason except that's what I used to used to Fallout 4. I saved a couple with BC3 SRGB DX10+, and it makes a HUGE difference! Thanks! use intel plugin and save as BC7 . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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