Valykry Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 I'm about to start working on my first mod, EVER.Keeping it simple i'm going to start with re-texturing for now.I've downloaded B.A.E and have everything I need to edit DDS files.I've figured out how to extract files, but i've ran into something I'm not sure I understand.When navigating to the data folder, i've found not 1, but 9 different files named Fallout4 - Textures[n].ba2 (n=1-9)They all appear to have the same content, with the only difference i've noticed is file size. If I had to guess, I'd say that they all contain the same images, but each file contains images of lower resolution than the previous, so it can apply the smaller resolution files to distant objects, and higher resolution to the closer objects, meaning that to do a retexture, I would need to create 9 different images for each object. Is this correct or is there something else entirely going on here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KG989 Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 Different texture directories actually contain different textures. For instance the different types of power armor T-45, 51, 60, X-1 etc. are actually stored in different .ba2 files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valykry Posted December 4, 2015 Author Share Posted December 4, 2015 Great. That's going to make tracking down specific files even more fun.Thanks though. I see what you mean now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KG989 Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 Which file are you looking for? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valykry Posted December 4, 2015 Author Share Posted December 4, 2015 (edited) actually, for starters, just various posters and "Advertisements", BUT as i'm planning on re-texturing quite a number of things, I'll try to find these things on my own. Gotta get familiar with file locations myself eventually anyway. ALSO, I've noticed that some (if not all) files seem to come in 3 parts, such as:filename_dfilename_nfilename_s obviously one is the primary image.the second (at least with the specific image I looked at) was just a solid blue square, and the third looked to just be splotches.What are latter two for? Edited December 4, 2015 by Valykry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KG989 Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 the _d appended files are the ones with the visible graphics and designs that you will most likely use for making custom designs and such on textures. The _n and _s appended files have to do with diffuse and lighting maps used on the texture to adjust how light interacts with the object. I'm not sure which of the texture.ba2 the posters are in. You could try looking a the textures that one of the mods that change the content of posters and paintings in the game uses and use the file names within to find the location of the tiles within the lists that BAE lists when opening .ba2 archives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valykry Posted December 4, 2015 Author Share Posted December 4, 2015 ok, yea. normal and specular maps. (just learned about those about 2 minutes ago actually. :tongue:) One LAST thing, I promise.When opening the "D" files, (Main image), there are several layers, each layer being 50% of the size of the one above it.would I be correct in assuming that THIS is what comes into play in place of my "If I had to guess" statement on the original post?Smaller, less detailed textures used for distant objects, only rather than separate images, it's using separate layers within an image? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KG989 Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 (edited) Yes that was spot on. They are called mipmaps. When you edit a texture it's good to update the mipmaps to reflect the new look of the texture. If you are using GIMP to edit textures and using the .dds plugin to do so than there will be an option when saving to generate mipmaps. Just make sure that when you save the new texture you erase the old mipmaps and create new ones with your image. Otherwise you may run into weird issues where your texture looks alright close up but then morphs into a different one a few feet away. Also don't worry too much about asking questions. We were all in the same boat at one point. And this is a place were we come to pool our knowledge and help each other out. No need to apologise. Edited December 4, 2015 by KG989 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valykry Posted December 4, 2015 Author Share Posted December 4, 2015 WHOA! thanks for the tip about it auto generating mipmaps. Until now, I've been manually scaling down the image for each layer myself. THAT'LL shave a little time off right there.I guess I didn't say so in my original post, but it IS Gimp that i'm using. Some people say photoshop is better, but Gimp has always suited my needs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KG989 Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 GIMP works for most stuff. Photoshop is nice if you have cash to burn but not 1000% necessary all of the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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