nifskope and dds coordinates?

[davidlallen]

In a few of the vaults there are lit signs like "Cafeteria" or "Mens Room =>". I want to add a few but I do not know enough about nifskope to do it. Each sign has its own nif like meshes/dungeons/vault/signage/vsignadmin01.nif. But all of the signs share a single dds file with a bunch of words in it, textures/dungeons/vault/vsign01.dds. Somehow, each nif file must give the x,y,x,y coordinates of a rectangle within the dds, which is to be used. Some nif files must give two rectangles since the arrows seem to be shared.

 

I know enough about dds and photoshop and alpha channels to put my text into the dds. But, can somebody explain to me how the nif file stores coordinates of the dds file, and how to change them to specify my own rectangles? My particular signs will have a single word, no arrows, so that should be a little easier.

Edited January 6, 2011 by davidlallen

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Highlight the area on your nif in nifskope, then right click->textures->edit UV

You will see how the vertices are mapped on the texture, and you can move them around if you like.

[davidlallen]

Excellent. That has solved most of my problem and it was very easy to do. But, some of the words are short and some are long. When I drag the box to the area of the dds I wanted to display, the new word may be longer than the original word. In this case I can make the box on the dds the right wide size, but the box on the nif is the original narrow size. So the letters are squished horizontally. The attached screenie hopefully shows this squishing. Is it easy to manipulate the edges of the displayed box on the 3d object? I tried some clicking and dragging but it only seems to rotate the view. (Did I mention I am not very familiar with nifskope?)

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Once you have the UV where you want it, I would then try editing the texture to get it to look how I want.

[davidlallen]

Do you mean, squish the dds instead of moving vertices on the nif? The problem is the space on the nif is too small, it leaves too much white space on the sign at the left and right of the long word. If I squish the dds, I will wind up with tiny letters and a huge amount of white space. Is it complicated to move the vertices on this particular nif? I only want to move four vertices.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

It's hard for me to visualize. Sounds like you want to change the words on a sign?

Blank out the word that is there, fill in the background, so you'll have a blank sign.

Then put in the word that you want, and manipulate either the texture or the mapping to get it to look right. Squishing the letters is OK as long as they look right on your sign.

[davidlallen]

Sorry, let me try to explain better. In nifskope, the bounding box of the texture that I want to apply is very small. See arrows in attached screenshot, it may help to zoom in. No matter what I do to the dds, it will not fill any more space than the small white box in the screenshot. How can I make the small white box in the screenshot wider? I need to move the vertices of the object. Adjusting the dds will not help. The related nif file is dungeons/vault/signage/vsignadmin01.nif, which I picked because it doesn't have any arrows (only one text mapping region instead of two).

[baduk]

Hi!

 

Thats a weird nif. Couldnt understand what u were describing without seeing it for myself.

 

Anyway the text is on a separate mesh in the second of the 2 nitristrips blocs.

 

IF u want to make that part wider u have to select the second tristrips block, the one with just the black text texture on it.

Right click > transform > scale vertices and scale it to 2 on x axis to widen it enough to fill the pane.

Or scale it to whatever looks rigt for u.

 

U can only scale it on the x axis tho cause the panel is runing diagonaly on the z axis. unless u want to scale it on the z axis and then rotate it on the x axis to get it lined up parallel again.

 

oh.. doh i forgot about the other side. yea um if u want to make the letters taller u gotta make a new text pane mesh in blender thats taller.

Or maybe u can just delete the text mesh and edit the texture and glowmap to get the text written on it.

I think they had it set up that way so they can switch out the text part easy or soemthign but. its weird they put another set of textures for the text part.

cause they put the text textures on the bottom of the other texture also.

Edited January 7, 2011 by baduk

[buddah]

There are two texture sets, you need to highlight the word only and rescale the word admin, ;by changing the x scale tp 2 On this mesh it is number 7, ckick on that to highlight the word texture. to do that highlight the uv map for the word "admin", right click, select scale vertices, and change the x value from 1.00 to 2.00, this will double the size from left to right and not change the centering up and down on the sign. If you want to move it laterally left or fight, right click and select edit, then move it one way or the other to where you want it. That is the x axis for left or right, and the z axis for up and down. When you are happy with what you have done save it with a new name or put a 01 on the end to keep the original as well.

[davidlallen]

Thanks everybody, I got it. Scaling x worked perfectly.