texture for girl's clothing - how does it work?

[Syntia13]

I have a technical question regarding textures for girl dresses. Both in original Hearthfire files and most files in texture replacers for kids' clothes (like dovahkinder), the texture only covers the 'tunic' part of the dress, and the space where 'skirt' texture should go is empty. And yet in game the entire thing shows correctly. How does that happen?

And, (for me) more importantly, why doesn't it always work?
I'm currently playing with a child's clothes mod, and when I create texture sets, sometimes in the preview window CK magically paints in the skirt that I know is not there in the dds file I set as diffuse map, but sometimes it doesn't, and the girls run around in pretty colorful tunics over skirts black as midnight. I see no difference between the texture sets where it does and doesn't work, but there must be something. What am I missing?
(I know I could just add the skirts to the dds, but it just bugs me. HOW does this work? Where is the skirt coming form?)

[IsharaMeradin]

The NIF file has textures assigned to each mesh portion.

The Creation Kit allows for overriding the default textures for each mesh portion. (i.e. assigning a texture set)

One must look to both locations to ensure proper replacement of textures used.

[Syntia13]

Hm. That's good to know, but it's not it in this case. I just checked in nifscope - there are indeed two meshes in the child clothes nif, but one is for 'body' (a tiny bit of neck), which is linked to body texture.

The dress itself is a single mesh, only shaped to look like separate tunic and skirt.

Also I discovered that nifscope has the magic skirt painting ability as well. I assigned several of the 'skirtless' textures and same thing happened as in CK. :

 

 

http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt347/Syntia13/Skyrim%20girl%20dress%20weirdness_zpscytdvycq.jpg

 

 

What puzzles me the most is where did the leather skirt came from (the second set). It could be argued that the skirt in the embroidered (first set) dress is just a repeat of the bottom of the tunic, but in leather dress there's nothing in the dds that looks like the skirt that shows on the mesh. Color me confused.

Edited May 31, 2016 by Syntia13

[IsharaMeradin]

The difference might be in the mesh. The base game mesh has a BSDismemberSkinInstance under the NiTriShape for the clothes whereas the Hearthfires version has a NiSkinInstance instead. No idea tho.

 

Sorry, I'm just as confused as you.

[Perraine]

It's because for some strange reason, the skirt part of the texture is completely Alpha'd out. The texture is there, you just can't see it. Tip: Use the 'Colour Picker" tool on the area where the skirt should be, and you'll see the colours, but with the Alpha set to 0

 

I have NFI why Bugthesda would do such a thing, but myself, I've given up trying to figure out the strange behavior of some of their devs.

 

AFAIK, you should be able to just add in your own texture, and not worry about the Alpha thing. Not sure why it would need it.

 

Maybe someone with more modeling/textureing knowledge may no why.

[Syntia13]

Sorry, I'm just as confused as you.

Thank you for at least trying to figure it out. I appreciate it. :smile:

 

 

It's because for some strange reason, the skirt part of the texture is completely Alpha'd out. The texture is there, you just can't see it. Tip: Use the 'Colour Picker" tool on the area where the skirt should be, and you'll see the colours, but with the Alpha set to 0

 

I have NFI why Bugthesda would do such a thing, but myself, I've given up trying to figure out the strange behavior of some of their devs.

 

AFAIK, you should be able to just add in your own texture, and not worry about the Alpha thing. Not sure why it would need it.

 

Maybe someone with more modeling/textureing knowledge may no why.

:ohmy: Jaw well and truly dropped. This is beyond bizarre, and I can't think of any reason for it either. I doubt it's in any way necessary, seeing as original three outfits had fully visible textures that worked perfectly well in game.

Thank you so much! Now that I know the secret, I could do something about it.

Since I wanted to modify/copy some of the skirts, I spent some time trying to de-alpha them.

 

For posterity and for all the people, who, like me, don't often mess with more advanced graphic options, here's the record of how to make skirts visible in GIMP:

 

 

Note: I have a localized version of GIMP, and I'm translating all the commands back to English as I go, so there might be some differences from how the commands are named in your version. Here we go:

 

Open dds in GIMP. (you need dds plugin for this, and also, for some reason, dds must be in its proper location - if you move it to a different folder, GIMP will choke on it. Don't ask me why)

 

Layer dropdown menu --> - mask --> add mask --> transfer alpha channel [add]

nothing changes in the main window, a tiny icon appears next to layer icon in the layer dock.

Layer dropdown menu --> - mask --> display/show masks (check it)

the black & white image appears in the main window

Edit dropdown menu --> fill with background color (it was set to pure white)

everything turns white

Layer dropdown menu --> - mask --> display/show masks (un-ckeck it)

the texture is back in the main window, with the previously transparent bits now visible

Layer dropdown menu --> - delete mask

the mask icon disappears from layer dock

File dropdown menu --> export as --> filename.dds

 

Save as dds pop-up box --> compression: BC3/DXT5, check 'generate minimaps', [OK]

 

now you have a fully visible texture, which will not confuse the heck out of any unsuspecting users. :wink:

 

 

[Perraine]

Yah ... Using the alpha channel to make things semi or fully transparent is one thing, and Bugthesda do this on many texture/mesh combinations (think fur edges = the Alpha'ing around the edges, makes the fur look more realistic) And I, and many other modders, have used the technique to "hide" parts of meshes or to make pretty see-through meshes or lacy stuff.

 

But I have no idea why it's necessary or even used on those outfits. The Alpha Mask layer can be used for several things, generally in Skyrim it's used for the "glossiness" and lighting intensity, but the Alpha channel that controls THAT is inside the Normal Map, not the Diffuse Map, so unless the girl's dress's were originally VERY high poly meshes, with no Normal maps, then I dunno.

 

Maybe it is just a leftover from development? something they forgot to fix/rework. That would be sooo unusual with Bugthesda.