Learning to texture

[Erisine]

Before the kit officially comes out, I decided to go ahead and spend some time learning the basics behind creating custom textures.

 

I've started by reading through some of the tutorials found on the construction kit/geck wikis and watching some YouTube videos (which proved to be far, far more valuable). However, almost ALL of these are specific to retexturing armors or weapons -- but my interest is actually in retexturing critters (and later on, as is required in my mod plans, creating all new ones -- but one step at a time).

 

I've noticed that almost all of the animals actually have multiple files instead of just one neat little texture file.

 

For example, wolves have:

 

wolf.dds

wolf_b.dds

wolf_n.dds

wolf_sk.dds

wolfblack.dds

wolfred.dds

 

I've figured out that wolf.dds is the default, and wolfblack and wolfred are just variants. I also think I've deciphers that wolf_n.dds actually stands for the wolf's "normal map" (something that is also incredibly alien to me, but I'm patient). What I can't figure out is what the _b files actually are for, or why wolf_sk.dds is a smaller version of wolf.dds -- what is its significance?

 

None of the tutorials really go into these kind of questions, so that's why I've decided to post here. I'm hoping someone could also explain how the game knows where all these textures actually GO on a model (they look like horribly complex sewing patterns, without any of the markup).

[throttlekitty]

_b I believe is for the backlight shader. On the wolf, it's used for the fur that flies off, if you catch it in the right light, it glows from behind. Similar to the rack in this image.

_sk is a skin tone map, I still haven't messed with these. I think the idea is that color from here gets pushed more depending on lighting.

 

Using NifSkope RC4 or higher, you can get a UV template, which is very helpful when texturing, and knowing how the model is laid out. (right click on any trishape and do texture>export template) Sometimes it's helpful to make a few test runs: scribble some extra colors and arrows to get oriented to whats-what with the texture and model.