Texture Replacers Don't Replace...

[Ojox]

To test this, I created a blank .dds file (pathed correctly) which should have made a helmet invisible. However, upon loading the game, this helmet was still clearly visible, hence my assumption that Skyrim loads both textures. My problem is that I want to "cut a hole" in one helmet, so that you can see the character's eyes through the helmet... Would it even work to replace the texture? Or would there be an issue because the texture doesn't cover the whole mesh? Do I have to edit the whole mesh for this, or can I compress a texture into a bsa, so that Skyrim looks only for that file, rather than loading them both?

 

Thanks for reading my craziness... and if you understood that, treat yourself to a cookie from the cookie jar :D

[MShoap13]

You're probably running into one of a number of issues, because the game definitely doesn't load both replacement and vanilla textures simultaneously. It's either one or the other. A very large number of models in Skyrim have multi-layered texturing applied, that consists of two or more texture.dds files being applied to the same surface, so keep that in mind. Moreover, there's also issues regarding exact file placement, Windows UAC and potentially even Archive Invalidation though I've yet to see any evidence of people actually having an Archive Invalidation issue, or of NMM's Archive Invalidation function even working, at all.

 

To answer your question, it is possible to do what you want only working with textures, though I've never done it and don't remember exactly how people are doing it. I believe it involves altering the alpha channels. I'll see if I can dig up a post about it.

 

Edit: How to remove parts of an armor via texture editing.

Edited December 23, 2011 by MShoap13

[Ojox]

You're probably running into one of a number of issues, because the game definitely doesn't load both replacement and vanilla textures simultaneously. It's either one or the other. A very large number of models in Skyrim have multi-layered texturing applied, that consists of two or more texture.dds files being applied to the same surface, so keep that in mind. Moreover, there's also issues regarding exact file placement, Windows UAC and potentially even Archive Invalidation though I've yet to see any evidence of people actually having an Archive Invalidation issue, or of NMM's Archive Invalidation function even working, at all.

 

To answer your question, it is possible to do what you want only working with textures, though I've never done it and don't remember exactly how people are doing it. I believe it involves altering the alpha channels. I'll see if I can dig up a post about it.

 

Edit: How to remove parts of an armor via texture editing.

 

Thank you so much! This is literally exactly what I was looking for :D