Help with new race clothing

[NikhilR]

Hi, I'm working on a new race.

I changed the texture (color) of Rens Mystic elf (tattoo version) texture (for a trial) and when ingame, I equipped the jail pants and the color of the leg mesh beneath the pants is the human skin color.

(see picture)

If I use say a orc race the color of the leg mesh changes (somewhat) to match the orc green color.

Its the same for all the other creature races (Wild Tabaxi, Argonian. etc)

Could anyone shed some light on this?

how can I get the color to match my race skin texture color?

Edited September 27, 2011 by NikhilR

[Eiries]

I'm not positive, but it might be because the mesh is still set to look for lower body textures instead of foot textures.

 

Is this still vanilla? If so, try using a vanilla clothes replacer that works with your body mod.

 

I'm gonna guess you're using HGEC. In the race's body texture menu, make sure upper body, lower body, and foot are all set to the footfemale texture that you chose. If the lowerbody slot is empty or set to an older texture, that might be your problem.

 

If nothing else works, opening the pants legs in NifSkope and changing the legs name to Foot: LowerBody may do it.

 

Good luck.

[NikhilR]

 

I'm gonna guess you're using HGEC. In the race's body texture menu, make sure upper body, lower body, and foot are all set to the footfemale texture that you chose. If the lowerbody slot is empty or set to an older texture, that might be your problem.

 

Good luck.

 

I was using Robert's male body v4 but setting the upper body, lower body and foot to the foot male texture seemed to do the trick!

I set the upperbody and lowerbody to a flat grey color texture map of the same size as the one assigned to the foot.

 

Also could you explain how the leg mesh (of the pants) changes its texture color (map) depending on the race wearing it. I was of the opinion that every mesh can only be assigned one texture?

Thanks! (also you get kudo's)

Edited September 27, 2011 by NikhilR

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, that's actually not quite how it's working. Changing the race texture settings in the CS to make the other body slots use the same texture will still cause big issues with Vanilla meshes. It's not only the files referenced but also the texture maps on the meshes causing the issues.

 

I found this out by accident, literally running into a brick wall again.

 

To have a mesh in a NIF act as a real bodypart, using the skin textures of the race wearing it and adapting in skin tint and color to your selections in CharGen, certain conditions have to be met:

- For one material "skin" has to be used, case doesn't matter.

- Then the "name" of the "NiTriStrips/Shape" node has to include a certain keyword telling the game engine which texture slot of the race to use.

* The keywords I could figure out so far are "Upperbody"/"Arms", "Lowerbody", "Hand" and "Foot". There's also "Tail" but this is somewhat special. Again case doesn't matter. Additionally there's ":" serving as a remark sign, so everything coming after it won't be treated as part of the keyword anymore. That's why in some body mods names like "Foot:Lowerbody" are not uncommon. The engine will simply ignore the "Lowerbody" part and use the "foot" texture of the race (with most body mods the texture for full-body coverage), but the user will know it's meant to be a lowerbody.

 

Now come the tricky facts:

- Using material name "skin" but not a proper keyword "can" make the engine go crazy with the mesh as it can't figure out which texture slot to use => don't do it.

- Using a name with a keyword in it but "not" material "skin" is totally fine and will simply not make the mesh a bodypart with features as described above. It will only be clothing or whatever and only use the texture file pointed to in the NIF.

- While the game engine totally ignores the texture file defined in the NIF when the above requirements are fulfilled, it still has to be a valid filename and there has to be a normalmap ("..._n.dds") file for it as well, or you will get a "missing normalmap" error indicator (pitch black or invisible mesh) ingame!

- I've run into issues when using "unconventional" filenames in the CS. I've named my dragon skin textures "footmaledragon.dds" and got "semi-transparent" bodyparts ingame. Couldn't yet figure out why, but it seems to be best to stay away from unconventional filenames.

 

I hope this sheds some light on how these things work and eliminates some confusion.

It should also explain why Stock Replacers are required for custom races, as those meshes otherwise make the game use the files defined in the other body slots and most custom races don't have files for those, as they were meant to be used with specific body mods, making them fall back to Imperial skin (the CS' default) or purple or worse.