LE Cube map based portal question

[icecreamassassin]

So I'm rather annoyed because I have successfully done this before but I cannot for the life of me replicate my success. You know the portals in the Snow elf forgotten vale that project a cube map 3d-esc image of where they lead? Yeah I made one of those previously, but I think I'm exporting my DDS from photoshop incorrectly.

 

-I took 40-some screen shots in game from a single position and took shots in all directions

-I loaded them up into a panorama generator which made a perfect panorama.

-Then I ran that panorama through a site that makes it into cube map faces.

-I took those faces, flipped and rotated them and placed them into a single texture.

-I flatted down the image, saved it as a JPG (because the native PNG file will not export to DDS properly)

-I closed the image

-opened it back up and then used the DDS plugin in photoshop to save as a DDS file. I used the Cube map option, DTX1 no alpha and rendered mipmaps.

-In the CK I created a new texture replacer and used the new DDS cube map on the Environment line. The diffuse is black and the normal is Default_n (these are exactly how the working portal is set up)

-I make a CK activator using SEWayShrinePortal01.nif (which is the snow elf chantry portals and the same that my working portal uses)

-I then edit the base of my new activator, and go into the model entry and replace the last texture at the bottom with my texture set.

-The texture replacer form shows one of the mapped faces just as it should (not a squished image of all of them) so it should be set up properly but all I get in the CK render window, preview window or in game for the model is a black field with the flickering portal field on it. The one I made before is working just perfectly.

 

I found the guide on TESAlliance about cube maps and previously followed it and there is no need to alter the properties of the NIF file since this specific NIF is a vanilla nif intended for this exact purpose, so it's already set up properly. I just can't figure out what in the DDS export process I screwed up. Any ideas? Thanks.

[icecreamassassin]

scratch that I figured it out. You have to save the DDS with 1 bit alpha but no actual alpha layer in the image.