Help: custom texture not appearing in-game

[EmissaryOfWind]

I'm making a small standalone mod with various recolors of the vanilla pre-war bed, but I can't get my texture to show up in-game, the bed appears with its vanilla texture. I made a material swap using material editor, what am I doing wrong?

[Descivii]

what format did you save the texture as? For Intel plug, I usually use the BC7 (sRGB, DX11) for diffuse and BC5 for normal and specular. Also, double check the pathing in your material file. For instance; if you copied your address from the bar in Windows Explorer then it will show the folder but not the file selectted and you'd need to manually add the file's name to the end of the copied address.

[EmissaryOfWind]

The plugin I have only has the BC5 (I think?) option, and I did add the file name manually. I double-checked everything I could think of.

[Descivii]

When you save, the top bar (Texture Type) set it to Color, then 2nd bar (Compression) should be set to BC7 for best quality (sRGB) and Mip Maps I usually set to Auto Generate

[EmissaryOfWind]

Sorry it's DTX5, and I don't have a choice, the plugin I have isn't Intel Texture Works (it didn't work with my version for some reason, I have an open-source plugin).

 

But still, that doesn't answer the problem I'm having :/

[PoliteRaider]

DTX5 should work for a diffuse texture. It's worked for me before. If Intel Texture isn't working you might want to try using the NVIDIA plug-in instead. (Honestly I think the NVIDIA plugin works better than the Intel one anyway).

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

 

When you say Material Swap, I think you're either using the wrong term or going about putting your bed in the game in a very unusual way. A Material Swap is an entry created in FO4Edit, so that when you place a particular mod on an item (such as paint on a suit of Power Armor) it uses a different material file and thus changes the texture. Since that's probably not what you're doing, I'm not sure how you're trying to get the texture in game and thus I can't tell where it might be going wrong.

 

So instead I'll start from the beginning and explain how the game loads an object's appearance.

 

The .esm or .esp file tells the game that an object exists, how to construct it and what .nif file (mesh) to use for its appearance.

The .nif file contains the 3d data of the objects shape and also tells the game which .bgem or .bgsm file (material) to use for the object's composition.

The .bgem or .bgsm contains all the details of the objects material and tells the game which .dds files (texture) to use for the texture maps.

 

In order to get your own item in the game you need to interrupt that process somewhere along the way with your own custom content. You can either;

1. Create your own unique object in a .esp, providing all details yourself about which .nif to use. This is a good way to make standalone items with a retexture.
2. Edit the existing .nif to tell it to use a different .bgem or .bgsm file for the material. (this makes a replacer rather than standalone)
3. Edit the existing .bgem or .bgsm file for the material to tell it to use different textures. (this makes a replacer rather than standalone)
4. Edit the texture files directly. (this makes a replacer rather than standalone)

You can also do material swaps if you want your altered appearance to come from an (in game) mod, but that's a more advanced and complicated trick, I wouldn't worry about it just yet.

Edited March 14, 2016 by PoliteRaider

[EmissaryOfWind]

I'm still figuring it out but what I did was:

- Create a new texture

- Create a material in material editor, based on the vanilla material, using my texture

- Create a material swap in FO4Edit replacing the vanilla material with my new material

- Create a furniture using the vanilla nif and material swap I just made

- Create a constructible object of that furniture

 

My newly created bed can be crafted and placed just fine, but still has the vanilla texture.

 

What I'm thinking is that either my material swap isn't applied correctly or my material itself doesn't work for some reason.

Edited March 14, 2016 by EmissaryOfWind

[PoliteRaider]

Ah, I see, you're using the material swap so that you can use the vanilla .nif, that's actually a good way of doing it although it makes things more complicated. Nothing sounds wrong with the procedure you're describing above. So you just need to troubleshoot it now.

 

I'd suggest having a look at a vanilla item that uses Material Swaps in FO4Edit, to see if the way you did it matches. Here's one I found.

 

NpcCouchSet01Weathered1x1Straight01Sit01 "Couch" [FURN:001A6B44]

 

Then move sequentially up the hierarchy to find out where the problem is happening.

1. Make a copy of your texture files and rename them so that they'll overwrite the vanilla textures. If this works, then your textures are fine and you can move on. If it doesn't work, you have a problem with your textures. (either way delete these test files before moving on to the next step so that they don't confuse things).
2. Make a copy of your material file and rename it so that it overwrites the vanilla material file. If this works then your material is fine, etc... as above.
3. Make a copy of the vanilla.nif file and edit it in Nifskope to use your material file and textures. Attach this new .nif to your furniture. If this works then your furniture record in FO4Edit is fine, etc... as above.
4. If everything else above is fine then something went wrong with your material swap.

Edit: Also I'm happy to look at the files if you'd like and see if I can spot the problem.

Edited March 14, 2016 by PoliteRaider