Blacking out of colours and textures

[Allannaa]

I'll start by saying I can't use most of the neato fancy modeling programs because I can't see wireframe due to vision issues, and most of these can't have the UI altered to something I *can* see. So I use Poser and DazStudio for the most part, to create "stuff".

 

Once I've got an OBJ file in either of those programs, I then import that into NifSkope, check to see that textures are correctly assigned, and that the scale of the item "works" in the TESCS.

 

But I'm having trouble with texturing. In the TESCS, as everyone knows, there's a "Brighten Lights" command, which I personally keep turned on until I've finished playing with a cell.

 

Now, with that Brighten Lights on -- Ob's own default NIF items look just fine, if a bit washed out. With it off, they look similar to what they'll look like in game.

 

But here's my problem -- with that Brighten Lights off -- every one of my *own* NIF items appears as flat black. With it on, they show their proper colours and textures.

 

Is this normal, or have I (yet again!) screwed something up?

 

I should mention, when I import the OBJ to NifSkope, I usually touch NOTHING other than the NifSourceTexture line. Usually I load "placeholder.JPG" in Poser or Daz, because those programs are not "DDS friendly". It hasn't been any big deal to go down the line and replace that JPG with the real DDS images -- it's just that, as I say, once in the TESCS, things seem strange with the "all black" for the item, instead of the visible, correct textures.

 

Is it possible that the problem has something to do with "*_n.DDS" files? What I would call the "bump" or "lighting" maps, that is -- do I need to create, and then add these, as well?

 

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

(Top is with Brighten Lights UNSELECTED. Bottom is with Brighten Lights clicked.)

http://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i384/AllannaaLassevanta/lightoff_on.jpg

Edited July 27, 2011 by Allannaa

[DrakeTheDragon]

Pitch black or also sometimes invisible meshes means they're missing their normalmap textures, the ones with "_n.dds" like you said. In Oblivion every 3D mesh's textures need to have a normalmap texture or these things will happen. The normalmap is also telling the game how much light should be reflected by the object and from which part of it by the alpha channel value, so no normalmap at all, or even stored in a wrong format without alpha channel, it will not reflect any light at all, and this means black.

 

You basically diagnosed the issue yourself already. You will need those normalmaps. But what you mean by "adding" them eludes me here. They have the same name as the texture they're used with and are stored in the same folder, because that's the way how the game finds them. They are not defined in NifSkope, although there is the possibility to do this. From what I know the game will not use these you added in NifSkope though, as this is not the way this version of the GameBryo engine works.

[Allannaa]

Pitch black or also sometimes invisible meshes means they're missing their normalmap textures, the ones with "_n.dds" like you said. In Oblivion every 3D mesh's textures need to have a normalmap texture or these things will happen. The normalmap is also telling the game how much light should be reflected by the object and from which part of it by the alpha channel value, so no normalmap at all, or even stored in a wrong format without alpha channel, it will not reflect any light at all, and this means black.

 

You basically diagnosed the issue yourself already. You will need those normalmaps. But what you mean by "adding" them eludes me here. They have the same name as the texture they're used with and are stored in the same folder, because that's the way how the game finds them. They are not defined in NifSkope, although there is the possibility to do this. From what I know the game will not use these you added in NifSkope though, as this is not the way this version of the GameBryo engine works.

 

Okay that last is kind of what I was afraid of, and of course neither Daz nor Poser allows the application of a DDS file as what they refer to as a "bump" map. What I've done thus far is use a placeholder.JPG, then in NifSkope, I did the right-click to choose and used the "flower picker" to add the correct texture. This worked well enough in that with the "Brighten Lights" turned on, you could see the textures in TESCS, but if I understand what you are telling me, EACH tecture needs its OWN *_n.DDS -- am I understanding you?

 

That is to say, "bottle1.DDS" must also have a specific "bottle1_n.DDS", and in the same folder as the texture file...?

Edited July 28, 2011 by Allannaa

[DrakeTheDragon]

This is correct, yes.

 

If you don't know yet how to quickly create normalmaps, there are plugins for Adobe Photoshop and Paint.NET which can do this. Keep in mind the transparency (alpha channel) of the normalmap texture also defines the shinyness, and having it all black or all white is generally a bad idea. If your normalmap is almost invisible, you will have a proper non-shiny alpha channel. The more a section is visible the more it will shine ingame. Accordingly "sometimes" DXT-1 or another format without alpha channel does actually work in removing all shinyness from your object, but in most cases it won't and will only make your object pitch black or invisible. A compression format "with" alpha channel (DXT-3, DXT-5, x8r8g8b8 uncompressed, etc) is highly in order for storing normalmaps.