Mesh Jet Black in Game but Not in Nifscope

[DavidBudreck]

I have some black mithril armor that appears JET black in game, but, when I look at it in Nifscope they appear fine, NOT perfectly jet black.

 

My knowledge of Nifscope and texturing is very limited, but from what I understand this is caused by bad Normal Maps.

 

I have no idea how to fix this.

 

I tried replacing all the textures from the archive, and went into Nifscope & did all the "Optimize" and "Sanitize" things available, but the meshes still appear jet black in game.

 

Can somebody point me in a direction?

[Genzel]

Do a quick check and make sure that all of the textures you use are perfect squares and are named properly. A normal map should be named identical to the color texture with "_n" on the end and "_g" for a glow map. This has happened to me before, and those above things will cause either a black, purple, or red/yellow checkerboard to appear on your mesh.

[Tomlong54210]

Yup, black (lack of) textures in-game indicates missing normal map...

[DavidBudreck]

The texture files all have corresponding "_n.dds" normal maps. The extent of my knowledge is to be able recognize normal map files and what they are called.

 

I also know they have to do with adding depth. But then why do the meshes appear fine in Nifscope but not in game? Does Nifscope not use the normal map when it renders the image? How does it know about depth then?

 

I had downloaded this mod ages ago and the author has long since retired. I guess they had always been wrong but I never noticed because, after all, it is Black Mithril.

 

Black meshes can't always mean "missing" normal maps because I have had several problems like this (that were more noticable), and they all had the "_n.dds" files, but were apparently bad.