How to make textures for new meshes

[vault75]

Hello,

 

I'm an intermediate modder for Fallout 4 but I'm not great at texturing new 3D models, as I do not know what goes where - without a lot of testing in Photoshop (which could take forever) there's no real way to tell where to put the textures in the file.

 

I played around with Blender and created a basic cube. What I need to do now is to create the .dds files for diffuse, normal and specular maps but I do not understand what goes where in the texture map, but I guess there must be a way of generating a blank texture map somehow?

 

Any help with this is appreciated,

 

Thank you

Michael

[Doom1991]

Hello,

 

I'm an intermediate modder for Fallout 4 but I'm not great at texturing new 3D models, as I do not know what goes where - without a lot of testing in Photoshop (which could take forever) there's no real way to tell where to put the textures in the file.

 

I played around with Blender and created a basic cube. What I need to do now is to create the .dds files for diffuse, normal and specular maps but I do not understand what goes where in the texture map, but I guess there must be a way of generating a blank texture map somehow?

 

Any help with this is appreciated,

 

Thank you

Michael

Pretty much you will need to extract the vanilla textures from game to get an idea how the texture files work, then use Gimp or Photoshop to make the textures you need for that mesh. Education on photo editing is needed to do this if you want to make a decent texture, otherwise get another person to make the texture for you.

[vault75]

 

Hello,

 

I'm an intermediate modder for Fallout 4 but I'm not great at texturing new 3D models, as I do not know what goes where - without a lot of testing in Photoshop (which could take forever) there's no real way to tell where to put the textures in the file.

 

I played around with Blender and created a basic cube. What I need to do now is to create the .dds files for diffuse, normal and specular maps but I do not understand what goes where in the texture map, but I guess there must be a way of generating a blank texture map somehow?

 

Any help with this is appreciated,

 

Thank you

Michael

Pretty much you will need to extract the vanilla textures from game to get an idea how the texture files work, then use Gimp or Photoshop to make the textures you need for that mesh. Education on photo editing is needed to do this if you want to make a decent texture, otherwise get another person to make the texture for you.

 

Thanks for your response.

 

I understand how to extract and change the existing textures, I've done that many times. But what I am talking about is how the textures map themselves on the mesh. For example, the clothing items in Fallout 4 seem to have different layouts for their textures, same with the weapons, so it's difficult to really pinpoint exactly how a texture attaches itself to the 3D mesh. If I start with a completely blank canvas how do I know where to put each part of the texture? So, I have a cube - I want each side to be a different colour - but where on the canvas do I places these colours is my question?

 

Michael

[Danneyo]

Up at the top left of blender, there should be a little tab on Default. Click it, and bring it down to UV editing. Then hit 'U' in the right box and use smart unwrap. When you're done, use the Save Image option in the bottom left on the left window.

[Doom1991]

Oh I see. Well that all depends on the program you are using. I like using Autodesk Maya but that program is really expensive so odds are you wouldn't be using that. Whichever program you are using should have a feature called UV Texture Editor which creates a layout for which texture goes where. Once you go into it, it should be self explanitory. It will break down your 3d model into flat gridded shapes on an image face. Hope that helps.

 

 

Edited June 3, 2016 by Doom1991

[vault75]

 

Oh I see. Well that all depends on the program you are using. I like using Autodesk Maya but that program is really expensive so odds are you wouldn't be using that. Whichever program you are using should have a feature called UV Texture Editor which creates a layout for which texture goes where. Once you go into it, it should be self explanitory. It will break down your 3d model into flat gridded shapes on an image face. Hope that helps.

 

 

 

 

I'm actually using Blender, with the nif export plugin installed - I'll take a look, thank you.

[vault75]

Up at the top left of blender, there should be a little tab on Default. Click it, and bring it down to UV editing. Then hit 'U' in the right box and use smart unwrap. When you're done, use the Save Image option in the bottom left on the left window.

 

Thanks for your response. I tried this, pressed the U key but the only options I got were Object, Object & Data, Object & Data & Materials+Tex, Materials+Tex and Object Animation. I chose Materials+Tex because I figured this would be what I needed, but all it does is populate some checkboxes in the middle column, the canvas on the left window remains blank. Not really sure how to proceed from here. I'm using Blender 2.77.

 

Thanks

Michael

[Doom1991]

 

 

Oh I see. Well that all depends on the program you are using. I like using Autodesk Maya but that program is really expensive so odds are you wouldn't be using that. Whichever program you are using should have a feature called UV Texture Editor which creates a layout for which texture goes where. Once you go into it, it should be self explanitory. It will break down your 3d model into flat gridded shapes on an image face. Hope that helps.

 

 

 

 

I'm actually using Blender, with the nif export plugin installed - I'll take a look, thank you.

 

Both look like different ways to get the same thing done. See which one suits you better.

[vault75]

Thanks for your help!