Re-coloring blues

[geneticpoverty]

I've recently started re-coloring weapons and armor in game and a couple moded items here and there, and i seem to have some across a slight issue. while trying to color some weapons that are white or gray, the slightest change to them in any way, will turn the weapon jet black. Even more recently while trying to lower the levels of yellow on a weapon it turns the entire weapon black yet again. So since im a little lost and still new thought i would seek help, any would be a great big help.

[Vagrant0]

I've recently started re-coloring weapons and armor in game and a couple moded items here and there, and i seem to have some across a slight issue. while trying to color some weapons that are white or gray, the slightest change to them in any way, will turn the weapon jet black. Even more recently while trying to lower the levels of yellow on a weapon it turns the entire weapon black yet again. So since im a little lost and still new thought i would seek help, any would be a great big help.

If you're importing the mesh into a 3d program, changing the texture, and exporting the weapon, the vertex colors might be causing it to turn black. You should always disable vertex color export on equipment meshes unless you have a very specific effect you are trying to achieve.

 

If you're altering the .nif in nifscope, you may be changing some of the material settings accidentally. This is fairly obvious since the object will turn black in nifscope too.

 

If neither situation above applies, it is likely because the new texture does not have a correct normal map (texture_n.dds) for the texture, or the normal map is not being found.

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...in_nomal_map.29

[geneticpoverty]

ok well im doing any re-coloring in photoshop at this point, is that a suitable program to fix this error?

[Pronam]

Are you referring to something in-game or inside photoshop itself? and what are your settings for the export?

You always need to include the normal map, even when you do a recolor. Just copy and paste it to same directory of the .dds.

[geneticpoverty]

well the item im re-coloring does have the normal map in the directory. lets just call it sword, it has the files "sword.dds" and "sword_n.dds". Also iv'e noticed a trend, the weapons that have this problem have particle effects added to them, and i'm wondering if those can cause changes in lighting on the weapon if the color it was meant to be is altered. and as far as exporting goes, i open the file in photoshop, change the color then i save it as the same file as "DXTI ARGB 4BPP/ 1 Bit Alpha".

[Pronam]

I would go for DXT3, Link.

[geneticpoverty]

DXT3 worked perfect, re-colored the weapon and no jet black texture, thanks a million to you both.