Getting New Re-Textures to show SELECTIVELY in game

[JPO81]

I'm practically ripped out from reading the informative mentions wherever I can find them, but there seems to be an open question that still remains from not only myself but others in this very forum and, I would assume, those currently in the same situation I am... How do you make your re-textures show up in game without applying those retextures to every associated default mesh?

 

Here's my workflow:

Create new Active ESP in GECK via fallout.esm, build a new area out of a cell, trash it, light it, whatever. Decide to make a custom sign or even a custom message on a door via editing appropriate textures. Creating new texture sets and applying them to new meshes of your target object in the GECK, dragging those newly textured objects into the GECK and everything looks fantabulous. You see your edits in the GECK.

 

But when you go ingame and COC your area, the changes you've made are not visible... and slightly screwed up.

Now, I know everyone is going to scream "read the texture ingame article!" I did. What I'm actually asking here is whether that applies to everything or just my newly created texture.

I can't really test that out efficiently to ascertain whether the ArchiveInvalidate stuff is working for either a broad scale or just my edits.

Is there ANY better, more intuitive system for applying your texture edits to specific objects INGAME without applying them to every other object?

 

Seems like such a simple question, but I just can't seem to get a straight answer out of any info source yet.

 

SOLVED...

See below for a separate issue. :)

[BadPenney]

The retexture process that you described worked for me.

 

When you say that you are checking your esp in game, do you have other user mods enabled and active?

[JPO81]

The retexture process that you described worked for me.

 

When you say that you are checking your esp in game, do you have other user mods enabled and active?

 

I have other mods selected as well in FOMM. Naturally, I want to be able to use those mods as well so if there's a conflict then that's something I'd need to work out within cooperation between mods.

Well, I re-evaluated my steps and realized I forked up by using a mesh in the .bsa file... so I copied and re-named that mesh and its associated texture into my mod folder in the appropriate directories within the FO3 Data folder and I'll work with that in the GECK. While I haven't tested it yet, I'm pretty sure that will solve my problem...

 

BUT...

 

I've come up with another issue that I've tried researching but to no avail.

What I'm trying to do is create a player home using the Enclave stuff, and for the doors I want to use one of the EncDoorSmCell1 doors. I've successfully put my own text in place of the CELL 1 portion of the label texture that the door uses (my copy, hehe). Now, on one side of the door, I have "Decon" all nice and pretty blue. So far so good. But I flip the door around and want to apply the same label texture to the other side but so that "Exit" is displayed on the other side. I edited "CELL 2" in the label texture to say "Exit", but I can't get that portion of the texture of my texture set to apply to the other side of the door because it's pointed only to the "CELL 1" portion.

 

My guess is that you have to change what section of the texture is referenced by the mesh. I used NifSkope to track down each component of the mesh I'm working with and the texture set it references, but I don't see any way to change which part of the texture a component of a mesh actually uses. Can this be done inside NifSkope? Or in the GECK itself?

When it comes to textures, while seemingly simple in an overall aspect, I have no idea how each piece in the texture is utilized and by what mechanism.

I do hope it's possible to do what I'm trying to do, because I don't want to end up having to create multiple separate textures containing each change seeing as how they're a considerable size in numbers.

 

Any insight to this and I'll stop bugging you guys.

:)

[pkleiss]

While I don't know how to do what you are asking, I do know that it is called UV mapping and is done with a 3D modeling tool like Blender. If I'm not mistaken, this will force you to export a new nif from your 3D app, or at least, copy a branch from your exported nif and paste it into a copy of the original. UV mapping tells which part of the texture to apply to which part of the mesh. As you have ascertained, both sides of the door you are working on are UV mapped to the same part of the texture.

[JPO81]

While I don't know how to do what you are asking, I do know that it is called UV mapping and is done with a 3D modeling tool like Blender. If I'm not mistaken, this will force you to export a new nif from your 3D app, or at least, copy a branch from your exported nif and paste it into a copy of the original. UV mapping tells which part of the texture to apply to which part of the mesh. As you have ascertained, both sides of the door you are working on are UV mapped to the same part of the texture.

 

Ah, thanks for that!

All things considered, I feel better about just creating a separate texture for each label using the "CELL1" UV map and just sacrificing the size addition since I'm really only talking about maybe 6 unique labels that need to be appropriate for each side of the doors. I don't see myself trying to get my head around Blender at the moment because I'm still climbing uphill with the modding aspect as a whole.

Thanks a lot for the insight though.

 

Onward!