Fallout 4 Texture Port Question (Substance Painter Options)

[ManehattanProject]

We are attempting to port a series of original textures from Fallout: New Vegas into Fallout 4. (IE, one's we've built for Fallout: New Vegas internally).

A little about our studio: We are using primarily Blender, NifSkope, GIMP, Photoshop, and Substance Painter.

We had initially intended on exporting OBJ with textures from the original game files for importation into editing software such as Substance Painter for PBR-based editing. The addition of the new (pseudo-PBR) format of Fallout 4's version of the Gamebryo engine has proven to be somewhat elusive, however. Some folks have reported success but have not reported how they were able to get the system set up.

It looks like the original RGB specular textures in New Vegas are now being presented as RBGA for Fallout 4. In addition, with research it appears that conflicting information exists about exactly how the specular and gloss mappings are supposed to be set up, channel-wise, and what the compression should be.

Questions:

Does anyone have a decent Substance Painter workflow for Fallout 4 yet?

Are there any tools that can help automate this process other than doing object exportation via Nifscope 2.x, and then re-importing directly by hand?

Are there any other textures that we need to worry about, or channels, other than RGBA for Specular + Alpha, Normal, and Spec+Gloss?

When porting, do we need to extract all alpha transparency into its own channel?

What is the proper order for Spec+Gloss channel storage? Is the third channel used for anything?

Edited August 19, 2016 by ManehattanProject

[DoctorKaizeld]

You know it is illegal to port assets from fonv to fo4 right? Bethesda has said no and as the copyright holders in this instance their word is backed by the copyright system.

[RaffTheSweetling]

You know it is illegal to port assets from fonv to fo4 right? Bethesda has said no and as the copyright holders in this instance their word is backed by the copyright system.

 

It would only be illegal to publish it in the public domain. If this team are making something for a non-published-circulation, i.e. their own own private usage, then there is nothing wrong with importing stuff in this way. If they intend on publishing it, then that's different. And it is definitely not allowed.

[DoctorKaizeld]

When i hear 'team' i assume the intent is not for personal use. As long as they arent sharing the assets among each others computers then they are doing nothing wrong. The moment they transfer assets among themselves they will be breaking the copyright protection that beth has. I do agree though no one can stop you from porting for personal use.

[ManehattanProject]

These actually are for assets we've already built in New Vegas (and are still creating for New Vegas) which we plan to use in Fallout 4.

 

All of the textures are completely new and original. None of them are using built-in textures created by Obsidian or Bethesda.

[SamFisher338]

I'm surprised at how frequently people still ask about this. But anyway: using the Intel plugin for Photoshop, BC7 for the diffuse (_D), BC5 with inverted Y for the normal (_N), BC5 with spec on the red channel and gloss on the green for the _S. No alpha on anything unless actually using transparency on the diffuse, and irrelevant blue channel for the _N and _S.

[ManehattanProject]

I'm surprised at how frequently people still ask about this. But anyway: using the Intel plugin for Photoshop, BC7 for the diffuse (_D), BC5 with inverted Y for the normal (_N), BC5 with spec on the red channel and gloss on the green for the _S. No alpha on anything unless actually using transparency on the diffuse, and irrelevant blue channel for the _N and _S.

 

Our own research into the problem has lead to a lot of contradictory solutions without a consistent resolution.

 

This is exactly what we were looking for so now we can start writing our automation scripts.

 

Thank you kindly!

[SamFisher338]

 

I'm surprised at how frequently people still ask about this. But anyway: using the Intel plugin for Photoshop, BC7 for the diffuse (_D), BC5 with inverted Y for the normal (_N), BC5 with spec on the red channel and gloss on the green for the _S. No alpha on anything unless actually using transparency on the diffuse, and irrelevant blue channel for the _N and _S.

 

Our own research into the problem has lead to a lot of contradictory solutions without a consistent resolution.

 

This is exactly what we were looking for so now we can start writing our automation scripts.

 

Thank you kindly!

 

 

You can also use the usual DXT formats for the diffuse (DXT1/3/5) if you want to save memory or have transparency. Oh, and you should also learn the new material system. The nifs point to a BGSM (or BGEM) file which has various settings that used to be in the nifs itself and some new, and point to the actual texture files. For using transparency and glow maps I recommend checking the available tutorials here on the nexus since it's not exactly the same as the previous games because of that. And learning how to set up material swapping in the esp is also useful.

If you have some knowledge of PBR it certainly helps a lot, but don't hold on too much to what you know, since FO4's is an unusual system. Sometimes not strictly following PBR can give better results. I recommend looking at the vanilla and other mods' textures to get a feel of how a texture looks vs how it looks ingame. Oh, and sharpening and contrast are your friends to fight the neverending blurriness ingame :P