Finishing Touches

[Egypt9]

I have a few problems that I haven't quite been able to figure out yet with my shield mod.

 

1. When I UV'ed my shield, in my paint program, it appears to be well lit but in game, it appears slightly darker in the front then i had intended. Is there some kind of lighting effect that I'm missing?

 

2. When i open my inventory and preview my character with the shield equipped, it shows up as a translucent black shadow over the characters arm. It's not really showing the shield.

 

3. When im in Cameleon, the shield renders and is not effected by the cameleon effect (probably related to problem #2)

 

 

Again, I appreciate all the help I have been recieving for the community. You will soon reap the benifits.

[Egypt9]

Well, I decided I needed a normals map to make my shield be a bit brighter and stand out more. So I made one, only problem is I can't tell if its working or not, I dont notice any difference. I'm saving the texture as modname_n.dds where _n is the first _ in the mods name. I can't get any plugins for the GIMP or PSP9 to work for DDS so right now, my .dds's get converted by a program (it does a good job!). However, I think the reason may be that I don't have an alpha channel in my normal map. I've got the technocolored image set as 1 layer as background atm. I know there needs to be a greyscale image in there but I just tried making 1 layer with that as a picture (GIMP says the 2nd layer other then the background is automatcally teh Alpha layer), saved it as .jpg and then had it converted with (save alpha channel, if any) enabled and I STILL haven't noticed a difference. Can anyone take a look at what I'm doing? Maybe explain exactly this whole technocolor/greyscale image junk thats going on?

[Egypt9]

I've been comparing other peoples _n.dds files and it is clear that I am doing something wrong.

 

this is my _n.dds

 

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c233/Egypt9/donenoitsnot.jpg

 

All the other _n.dds files i've viewed have a wite background or they're on some kind of weird transparency thing. I have no idea how to mimic this, I used some tutorials that told me to use the NormalsMap plugin with the GIMP and now this is what I have. I REALLY hope that this doesn't mean I have to redo this whole thing from scratch because I spent a lot of time on this. If anyone has any experience with normals maps, please post.

[Hsandman_1]

I've been comparing other peoples _n.dds files and it is clear that I am doing something wrong.

 

this is my _n.dds

 

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c233/Egypt9/donenoitsnot.jpg

 

All the other _n.dds files i've viewed have a wite background or they're on some kind of weird transparency thing. I have no idea how to mimic this, I used some tutorials that told me to use the NormalsMap plugin with the GIMP and now this is what I have. I REALLY hope that this doesn't mean I have to redo this whole thing from scratch because I spent a lot of time on this. If anyone has any experience with normals maps, please post.

 

I did read tutorial on normal maps so that is as far as my knowlidge on this topic goes, but that image you have is how it should be. (i think) Maybe you need to cut out the shapes and place them on transparent layer in your graphics editor? *shrug*

Have you tried to post to bethesda moding forum? Read oblivion wiki tutorials on making shield textures?

 

Sorry can't be much help on this :(

 

Edit: ahh you need to convert it to grayscale... and have both.. colour (bluish one) and grayscale

 

Now under the layer view, there should be a Channels tab. Click it, and then click on the Alpha channel.

 

 

 

You'll notice that the alpha channel looks similar to the Daedric color map, just that it's black and white, and some areas are brighter than normal. As I said before, those bright areas will thus be more reflective ingame.

 

Go back to your color map and undo the normal map filter if you haven't already. Copy the image and paste it into the alpha channel of the normal map. You might notice that it immediately turns it to grayscale

 

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...mal_Maps_Basics

 

Black Surfaces (Missing normal map or no alpha channel in nomal map)

This is usually a side-effect of a missing normal map, but can also be caused by a normal map that has no alpha-channel.

 

Objects that have gloss use the normal map's alpha channel to determine how reflective each part of the object is. When the game can't find the normal map, the object looks very dark or even black, because those nif files are set to faint emission of black color, and without an alpha channel, the black color leaks out everywhere.

 

When the normal map is missing, you'll also experience abnormal behaviour in the inventory window especially for rings and amulets, as described above.

 

Objects with a strong emissive black color and much gloss (Jewelery for example) might even appear black instead of pink when the game can find no texture at all, see the infos on missing textures above.

 

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...in_nomal_map.29

 

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...uring_Tutorials

 

So (i guess) you need two normal maps, you missing the black/white one, makes your shield look black.. dono. Hope you figure it out. gl.

[Egypt9]

Hey, at this point, I'm taking whatever advice people dish out...between tutorials, wikis, and thread-digging here, I'm highly confused about normal maps. I will give this a shot though, i have a feeling i'm very close ^_^

[Egypt9]

Success!!!

 

Well...sort of. The good news is that I managed to add an Alpha Layer to my colored version by using "add grayscale copy" in Add New Mask. However, now my mesh lights up like a Roman Cancle in game. I suspect this has much to do with how I actually Normal Mapped but I have a couple of questions concerning the GIMP. Now that I actually have this Alpha Layer...the contents of it are like a translusent blackness in the shape of my texture. It seems to be effected slightly when I mess with Contrast and doesn't seem to change at all when I try to Desaturate it as other tutorials have suggested. Before I take my information to a different forum whom might be frequented with more experts in Normal Maps as you've suggested, I would like to know whether someone can read how I've handeled my Alpha Layering and look at the above sample, and give me some feed back.

 

1. Do you think the high rate of shineness has to do with how my Normals Map looks? I did use the "height" selection and around the edges and I assume now that, while i increased the scale and really made it stand out that this selection may have been a bit much.

 

2. Have I added the alpha layer properly? In many tutorals they seem to be able to just switch to the alpha layer and see a greyscale image. On my end, I use the gimp. I inverted my selection and added a new mask layer. What I see now is a Transparency with just the selected parts of my mesh showing, with a semi-transparent Alpha Layer.

 

3. What kind of results can I expect from selecting only the alpha layer, in its semi-transparent state, and messing with contrast, smothing..etc. Should I?

 

I'm probably going to end up reworking this in PSP and exporting it that way. If anyone is interested, if you are working from a custom Normal Map based on your texture and you don't have an alpha channel from which to work. You might find the statements on this website interesting.

 

http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/Alpha_Channel