Texture Oblivion help

[heathletter]

help request from anyone who has successfully modeled and textured for oblivion.

can someone give me an in-depth breakdown on how oblivion textures work? Most importantly I would like to know how to correctly export textures (dds files) to my models (mostly creatures), and and a program that can do these things. What settings should I set in a program that exports dds files for oblivion to recognize the textures on my model? My issues when exporting is when I preview the model in construction set, it appears invisible in the window. The only texture that works is when I apply Oblivion's textures which were extracted using bsa commander. I don't understand the format in which these files were made and exported.

Things I tried were:

-exporting the model using a custom made blender 2.49b that allows you to export models to nif with the option to force dds extension. Construction set doesn't seem to recognize the dds file converted in blender.

-Exporting the texture separately with another program like a krita plugin or gimp. if there is a specific way to set it up to work let me know.

The guide I used up until this point

- https://cs.uesp.net/wiki/Blender/Creature_Meshes_101

[LenaWolfBravil]

For textures, I  always use GIMP. You need to download two plugins: one for DDS support and the other for making normal maps. When exporting as DDS, make sure you merge all your layers first because only the active layer is exported. Then use either DXT1 compression (if your texture is not using the alpha channel) or DXT5 compression if the alpha channel is used. Enable mipmaps generation (in the same export options window).

Then, to make a normal map, I follow a two step process:

1. Select Colour to Alpha from the menu and choose black (note: default is white).
2. Run the normal maps filter. The result should look purple with transparency.
3. Export as mytexture_n.dds using DXT5 compression and with mipmaps.

[AndalayBay]

Here's the CS wiki page on the different DDS formats used for various kinds of textures. Irfanview is really handy for getting information on image files. You can open a DDS file and then press I (i) to get information on the image including the compression used.

I use Photoshop and the Nvidia normal maps filter. There are two methods for creating a normal map using the normal maps filter. If you want a texture with various levels of shine, then you create the normal map from the alpha channel, as Lena described. If you just want a normal map to give your mesh some bumpiness, then you create the normal map from the RGB colour channel.

TES Alliance is an excellent source of tutorials. Here is InsanitySorrow's tutorial on creating alpha channel normal maps with Photoshop. This tutorial includes instructions on creating a normal map with Gimp.

Here's a tutorial from the CS wiki on creating textures with Gimp.

Lastly you're going to need Nifskope. Here's the latest version.