Please give me advice on re-texturing

[Haoswidasee]

I was going to start re texturing some things in the game. I have never done so before so I was looking for some advice on how to begin, which programs to use, etc. I am a talented artist but this will be new. Anything would help, thank you!

[Jeesmies]

For a start you pretty much need just GIMP and some plugin for it if I remember right, then just drag and drop the texture file in there and start making art.

[Haoswidasee]

For a start you pretty much need just GIMP and some plugin for it if I remember right, then just drag and drop the texture file in there and start making art.

 

thats what i hear so far lol, thanks man

[tomomi1922]

You should have a lot of existing tool available. Such as Photoshop. Download Intel DDS Texture Plugin for Photoshop (its newer than nVidia plugin). Download Material Editor as well. And Nifskope. Nifskope views the content of NIF file, it is an easy and fast way to preview your work without having to jump into the game. Nifskope is also the only way to edit Material path inside a NIF file.

 

Because, unlike Skyrim or most games I know, models in FO4 has 3 types of files now: Mesh, Texture, and Material. In fact it goes like this: Material file links texture files to Mesh. 1 NIF file for Mesh, with numerous material references (like certain outfits that shows skin will need a path to the skin texture). Material can be just 1 file or many (depending on how many type of textures you want on the model). Texture file has standard 3 files, diffuse, Normal, and Specular for each material file. So if you have 1 retexture of an outfit that has 5 different material references, you need 5 different material files and 15 DDS files.

 

- Texture files are most "innocent" with no link or dependency. Just plain old DDS.

- Material file has direct link to a texture file, along with all the settings of materials, shine level, transparency level, etc...

- Mesh file has multiple references, sometimes direct, sometimes relative, to material files. So this file is the most complex to deal with in term of reference paths.

Example: Army Fatigue is 1 NIF file but can be used to reference 2 different items: a pre-war clean outfit, and a post war dirty outfit (that you may find on skeletons of dead soldiers). Most people doing retexture of this item often treat them as 2 different outfits (because they are), instead of a "newer" or "older" version of the same outfit. I still have no idea how to create multiple outfits that uses 1 NIF but points to 2 different textures. So I use use a duplicate of the same NIF for each and every texture (if I do a standalone mod). But for retexture alone, all you need is to create appropriate texture files (and material files if you want to change material properties) that point to an existing NIF in game.

 

I also have no idea how to create Normal map and spec map yet (that conforms to FO4 standard). Simply supplying texture from Skyrim, for example, will not quite work as FO4 reads Normal and spec map differently. You have to read up some tutorials on how to do that.

Edited January 17, 2016 by tomomi1922

[bunneh13]

as tomomi1922 said you have a fair bit to play with. if you have photoshop grab the Intel DDS Texture Plugin. Fallout uses PBR shaders so old textures like from skyrim wont work. You can read more about it here and here

Fallout uses a 3 maps "_d" diffuse. "_n" normal (DirectX normal map with blue channel removed exported using "normal map" from plugin) and "_s" which holds a specular and a gloss map in the red and green channels (exported using the "normal map" export from the plugin(blue channel is unused)). I hope this information helps you and good luck!