Shell Texturing in Photoshop

[ZodiacBlack]

I am interested in how I can create a shell texture with photoshop using nvidia texture tools plugin. I have read the tutorial from an LE mod, which was helpful on creating the shell meshes, but was too vague on the details for creating the shell texture.

 

Update: The shells actually work when I import the .obj into nifskope and follow all the instructions... but now the mesh I created has some really whacky mesh wrapping that looks like this:

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Update 2: I have investigated the textures further in photoshop. I have discovered that by specifically selecting the alpha channel, I can edit the textures with brush tools. The results are shown below. As you can see, the first issue I encountered was that adding adjustment layers like black/white and brightness/contrast basically does nothing good, because now you have very obvious layer cutoffs. The second attempt was to directly draw some rudimentary hairlines, which actually came out well. If one were to practice and is proficient in drawing, this would be the most ideal result, as you can see that the length of the hairline also corresponds with the resulting depth, direction, and hairstyle. The next method was with a preset pattern brush, using dithered dots. This seems to come out really nice as a starter setup, and might be useful for filling large areas of fur. The final attempt was with a spray-paint style brush. Those didn't show well at all. It's there, but barely noticeable. I personally wouldn't recommend this method, unless you're specifically looking to make fuzzy stubbles or multi-depth layered sand patterns. 

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[ZodiacBlack]

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[ZodiacBlack]

Update: I got into a little more editing today, and it seems that my method worked quite well. Here are the results.

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[ZodiacBlack]

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[ZodiacBlack]

Final: Now that I have figured out what to do, I can go on to finish the rest of the textures and other meshes. Thank you for tuning in.

[scorrp10]

Ok, the image you have in your first post makes it look like you got a few misplaced vertices on that horse.   You probably should check that mesh in Blender.

Speaking of Blender, have you tried texture painting there?   You can paint directly on the 3D shape.  And you can also assign materials, specifically hair materials from library, and then just bake textures for diffuse,  normal, specular etc.

Now, about working in Photoshop:  first off, I usually load the mesh in Blender and use Export UV option to export its UV as a png of same size as the texture file.  Then, in Photoshop, I use paste-in-place to add UV map as a layer on top of all others.  I usually apply HSL to UV layer to make it bright green set opacity to 50 and lock it.  Next working with multiple layers, including adjustment layers:  I keep my multilayered texture file saved as a .psd.   However, if I need to see how it looks as a texture, I toggle off the UV layer, and, choose File - Save a Copy, and save it as a .dds.  using nVidia texture exporter.

[ZodiacBlack]

Thanks for the tip!