Texture Mods, better method?

[Rcmo]

Hi, as a hobby Photoshop artist i have idea for some cool textures and skins for both Fallout and Skyrim. 

However, using a method i found on youtube, basically extracting texture file and opening in Photoshop seems so hard to see what im even looking for. For example: i opened a weapon texture and man does it look complicated, i dont even get what texture goes where, it looks all conected. What i hoped for is diferent texture for each sides and corners of weapon... Not to mention that there is several files. The one i looked at is named "color" i belive. 

My question is, is there a better method for doing this, by using Creation Kit or maybe som 3D software? 

[worm82075]

Get Nifscope and pick your texture by viewing the mesh that it goes to. You will be able to view and export the UV map also. After setting up Nifscope to see all of the vanilla archives, unpack the meshes archive and then you can browse them with Nifscope. Most shapes within the mesh will have a texture set that points to the location of the textures. Right clicking the shape in the viewer will allow you to edit the UV which will show you the map and then you can see exactly which parts of the texture are actually used. If you want to change the look of the material the mesh is displaying, you will have to learn how to make normal maps(_n) for your diffuse images(_d).

If you have a modern CPU with AVX2/AVX-F16C get this fork instead Nifscope

Edited June 28 by worm82075
Added new link

[DiodeLadder]

Hello rcmo,

Pretty much everybody who is doing more involved texture work is using Substance Painter (Adobe), and I don't think Photoshop alone would cut it.  This is what it looks like.

Substance Painter used to go very cheap during Steam Christmas Sale, and I think I got the Painter/Designer bundle for 130 euros.  Today, they never go on sale, and the Painter alone costs 200 bucks.  Thanks Adobe.  

About the textures :

_d = Diffuse (color)

_n = Normal (This basically maps which direction the surface is facing, and creates an illusion of having more geometry, Fallout 4 uses DirectX format)

_s = Specular (Red channel, shows which part is metallic) and Gloss (Green channel, shows smoothness of the surface)

_g = Emissive (lit element)

The reason the textures don't have clear borders corresponding to UV islands is, because when engine uses the mipmaps the textures no longer would be very precise, and seams/gaps could appear in game.  Those overflowing colors are meant to cover the gaps in mipmaps.

[RoNin1971]

On 6/28/2024 at 9:47 PM, Rcmo said:

Hi, as a hobby Photoshop artist i have idea for some cool textures and skins for both Fallout and Skyrim. 

However, using a method i found on youtube, basically extracting texture file and opening in Photoshop seems so hard to see what im even looking for. For example: i opened a weapon texture and man does it look complicated, i dont even get what texture goes where, it looks all conected. What i hoped for is diferent texture for each sides and corners of weapon... Not to mention that there is several files. The one i looked at is named "color" i belive. 

My question is, is there a better method for doing this, by using Creation Kit or maybe som 3D software? 

There are many ways leading to Rome, as we say.

 

It somewhat depends on what you are working on, but for most of it you do not need anything besides photoshop or GIMP. (GIMP is the one I use, for pretty much all my texture work.)

To make things easier for some cases there are ways to 'paint directly on the object'. Such is possible with a 3D modeller like Blender, or programs like substance painter, ZBrush and Mari.

Nifskope is a nice to have utillity that lets you inspect and slightly change a 3D model and its associated materials and/or textures. The materials are shown within CK, but not the textures. (Note: some nif's have both the material & texture set present, some have only 1 of those 2. Materials can only be swapped in CK if a material is set!)

Blender does a much better job at exporting UV maps, imho.

 

One more type of texture you might encounter:

_m = environment Mask

 

The _d.dds (Diffuse map) is the one with the 'colors'. That's the 'main' one you need to create. It's mostly like a normal picture, but (preferably) without shadows & other lighting effects.

The _n.dds (Normal map) is the one giving it 'depth'. That's your second most important file. There are filters that let you generate one based on a diffuse map, but the results are mediocre.

The best way, often referred to as 'the proper' or 'right way' (which it isn't, imho) is to bake the normal with Blender for example, based on a high & low poly version of the object. Although this will result in a better normal as generating one in most cases, your 'high poly' version needs a ridiculous amount of poly's to correctly bake the finer details. (a bumpy surface, a crack in a wall, etc, etc.) - Now, there is one big FALSE assumption here ... the existence of a high poly model. 9 out of 10 times I work on a model, I'm changing a vanilla LOW poly model. There is no high poly version there!

 

So, What does work best, in my opinion, is using/creating height maps & use those to generate a normal map.