Adrius2 Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 Was gonna request a mod at first but decided hell, I might as well learn something myself. Inspired by mods like Daedra of Coldharbour and Vampire Eyes of Coldharbour, I'm thinking of making a retexture of the Vampiric Drain and Vampire Lord Vampiric Drain. I want to make these spells cold blue instead of blood red, to kind of represent draining the enemy's soul rather than his blood, kind of. Anyway it's gonna look awesomely Coldharboury (that's a word now) So... I'm just wondering where I find these textures in the bsa? Hoping someone can help make my life a bit easier! tl:dr: Adrius wants to retexture all effects related to absorb health and is too lazy to find them himself in that vast archive, which texture files are these? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steelfeathers Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 Oh boy. It doesn't sound like much to say 'i want to change the color of this spell', but you've actually set yourself quite the task. Changing spell effects is HARD. Much harder than edited armor or weapons. 1) Get a bsa extractor, and extract the files from the skyrim bsa2) Open up the vampire drain nif in nifskope and look for BSEffectShader nodes3) Inside the BSEffectShader nodes, there will likely be a gradient dds file. Open it (you have to extract it from the bsa as well), change the color in photoshop/gimp/whatever, then resave with a different name4) Edit the filepath inside the BSEffectShader nodes to point to your new dds gradient5) Save the nif If that was all gobbledygook to you, then you'll probably need to start smaller. Play around with the creation kit, download nifskope and look at different mesh files, etc. Just get used to the system first. Believe me, this rabbit hole goes reeeeaally deep, especially for spell effects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrius2 Posted June 4, 2014 Author Share Posted June 4, 2014 Oh darn, I've done some personal retextures of armors and thought it would be just as easy... just popping the DDS files up in GIMP and edit away. Sounds like a lot of work, but I do get what you're saying.... hmm... thanks a lot! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steelfeathers Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 Oh darn, I've done some personal retextures of armors and thought it would be just as easy... just popping the DDS files up in GIMP and edit away. Sounds like a lot of work, but I do get what you're saying.... hmm... thanks a lot! If you've already done some armor texture editing, then you're off to a great start. You have all the basics you need to be able to edit a spell color.Like I said, find all the BSEffectShader nodes, and in every one replace the gradient texture with your new gradient. That should hopefully do the trick.....unless Bethesda has decided to be a troll and completely hide referenes to parts of the spell mesh, like they did for the flames effect. >_> In which case you're boned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trold Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 (edited) Just an alternative suggestion using only the CK to fiddle with colours and effect. Load up the Dawnguard.esm in the CK, then go to "Magic\Magic Effect" then look for and edit "DLC1nVampireDrainShadeEffect" (I'm guessing that's the one). I'm not sure how much it's possible to edit it this way, but this is how I would begin. (editing textures is scary to me :ohdear:). Edit: I don't know what I'm talking about. It's not as simple as I thought. Edited June 4, 2014 by trold Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrius2 Posted June 7, 2014 Author Share Posted June 7, 2014 Eh... got too complicated for me. Shame :) Still, if anyone got inspired... go right ahead and do what I couldn't :D (and share with me, hoho) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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