Body Texture Questions

[LordEmm]

I have a quick and dirty question about how textures work in the game actually. I use Ozmos HGEC replacer and that works great actually, but i have noticed that the .esps point to upperbodyfemale.dds while there is no such thing in the HGEC replacers. I assume that the foot.dds textures override the upperbody (or is just that newer overrides older?), but lately i have noticed that when characters wear vanilla clothing that show some skin the color is way off. When i remove upperbody that part goes purple, so i again assume that the game uses the upperbody as a layer under clothes.

 

Is there any way to make the game actually use the replacement skin? That would make for a much smoother look with clothes.

 

The same goes out for non vanilla races. I have seen that for example Nec's mystic dark elf remake has paths to the imperial upperbody and leg files, yet that would clash greatly with the standard look. Of course these are less likely to wear standard clothing, but still something i need to find out in my quest to know everything ;)

 

Could one simply cut out the upperbody part and make a new upperbody dds that way? I guess not, because i do not know where the arms are on the whole (and i am bad with photoshop anyway).

 

Last one: The Vanilla textures are in the BSA, i am guessing. If i do not have an upperbody/leg.dds for a certain race, the game looks in the BSA, right?

 

Thanks once more for all the great help here,

LEmm

[LFact]

Almost all current body replacers use foot texture to wrap around whole body, so in a way they preserves compatibility with clothes/armor for stock body meshes(if there're textures for vanilla body).

[LordEmm]

I understand, but the color of the skin under vanilla clothes and armor differs greatly from the installed skin. So i wonder where that comes from? I assume that is because under the armor the skin is actually the vanilla skin and not the replacers. But how can i make the replacer work in that instance to get a more smoother look.

 

That is my question here. I think i do understand that the foot textures get loaded last and as such override the whole body, but that does not seem to work with stock clothes that show off some skin. It DOES work with non-vanilla clothes and armor though. It also works when for example only the top is naked.

 

But what i mean is like, a NPC wears the short slave breaches (which leaves the lower leg free not just the foot) and the leg color is way different than the upper body color or foot color. It is not always noticable, so not really annoying, however it is greatly noticable if there is upper body armor that shows skin. Again i am just trying to understand how it works, so i can maybe do the corrections myself on the few items of clothes that it affects. It is only in about 10% (because most clothes hide the complete upper/lower body anyway.

[thePhilanthropy]

I think I know why that happens. The reasons are a little technical though.

 

The vanilla meshes that show skin all include certain parts of the vanilla body meshes. Even if you installed a replacer these meshes will still use the vanilla body. Plainly, a simple body replacer only replaces the naked body parts (shown only when you wear nothing).

The texture has to be laid out onto the mesh somehow. That's where UV maps come in. They represent the layout of the 2-dimensional texture on the 3-dimensional mesh. So, even though the vanilla body meshes (which are included in many clothes/armor) and the replaced body meshes use the same texture, the UV-map is most likely different.

That's the main reason I think.

Another problem are EGT files. They define how the skin-color changes when you manipulate the sliders (when you create a new character). Some body replacers include custom EGT files.

If the UV-map and the EGTs are different from the vanilla ones (which they probably are for every replacer) these anomalies will occur.

 

The only way around this is to also replace stock armor/clothes with custom ones. Do a search for that. Maybe you find something.

 

Hope that helped clear things up.

[LordEmm]

Thank you for the replay. That certainly explains a lot. I thought armors did not have extra maps (at least not for the portion that is covered by the armor), but i guess the maps are like coveralls.

 

Well, i have found a few replacers, the problem is i use custom body textures for all races (not just imperial), so i guess most armors are only adopted to the imperial look. I also use Roberts for male bodies, and Ozmos HGEC for females, so that makes it a little more difficult. For some reason i just assumed armors and clothes would simply only overwrite the places they cover and leave the rest alone. That is obviously not the case. But now i know what skills i need to learn so i can make adjustments of my own ;)

 

Anyway, again it is no biggie and really only noticable in the few custom outifts which allow for skin to shine through. And there are not that many. It was mostly noticable on the beggars outfits (and come to think of that only with males... have to check again. I am sure i saw a Roberts stock clothes replacer somewhere....)

 

Thanks all for the help. Very informative :)

[thePhilanthropy]

I thought armors did not have extra maps (at least not for the portion that is covered by the armor)

Armors do have their own UV-map. Body parts and armor may be in the same file, but the file is structured in such a way that it allows several meshes in it. (Check out NifSkope and open some .nif files with it.)

 

It also doesn't matter whether you have more than just the imperial texture. That's actually a good thing. Oblivion's engine automatically assigns the correct racial body texture to body-meshes (even if they are part of armor).

 

And combining roberts male stock replacer with any of the female ones shouldn't be a problem either, because roberts only replaces male versions of meshes, while any female replacer only replaces female versions.

 

Have a good time!

[LordEmm]

Thank you very much. I worked it all out and now i am having (almost) perfect bodies for male and females ;) I am even now tweaking which elf ears i put on which races (custom too) and so forth. Merged all the beauty mods i use into one esp and removed dependencies on others... I will also merge all the armors, so that the game needs to load less esps, which i guess can only be a good thing. Now i will start to learn nifskope (mainly to convert armors, and so on).

 

But first probably a couple more texture problems, in another thread. Maybe you can help with that too?