Tutorials for editing textures? The actual editing bit.

[Yodhrin]

I rather like both the Minutemen retexture mods, but neither is quite what I had in mind and I'd like to have a pop at making my own version. Thing is, the "how" bit is proving annoying - I have a basic understanding of GIMP & I know I need the plugin and how to extract the files from the BSAs etc, but finding tutorials on the actual "editing the textures in GIMP" bit is proving a problem, all I can seem to find are full on "learn how to make textures from scratch" video series, or short beginner videos detailing how to extract the files.

 

I pretty much want to do one thing - transplant the armband from Preston's duster to various other clothing items(recoloured blue with an added embroidered Minutemen logo), but it can't be as easy as merely copying and pasting, surely? Can anyone point me to some relevant tutorial/walkthrough content?

[steve40]

I'm sure there are plenty of tutorials out there on how to copy and paste, work with layers and masks, clone stamp, hand paint with different brushes, and so on and so on. I don't think anyone is going to spoon feed you how to do this.

[Perraine]

Doing the clour change and adding the logo to Preston's armband is pretty easy, that's just basic texture editing, But you can't just "transplant" that to other outfits easily. You have to understand something called "UV maps" which is the term for how the texture "wraps around" the 3D model. The simplest way to picture it is a 3D cube which has 6 sides. The "unwrapped" texture is shaped somewhat like the letter 't' with 6 flat squares, however the layout and colour of those squares will determine what colour each of the 6 sides of the cube will be when viewed in game.

 

Now think of an outfit mesh and texture. The same principle applies but obviously you have a LOT more than six 'sides', you may have hundreds or thousands, so the layout is very particular in order to get the texture to "wrap" around the mesh properly. Sadly there is no "standard" for how this unwrapping is done, so each and every mesh has a different UV map - hence you cannot simply "copy/paste" from one texture to another, because what is the arm on Preston's outfit, might the leg on another. So you'd have to edit each and every texture fie for every item you wanted to ads the armband to.

 

The only way to do it would be to create a completely separate item, that sits on top of the other meshes, but that has it's own issues with clipping, positioning and sizing.

[Yodhrin]

Thanks Perraine, I thought there might be something like that, and it's nice to see not everyone's reaction to a potential new modder is snark. On the seperate item front, could repurposing the existing bandana model work? I've done some basic mesh editing in nifskope when I was messing about with Skyrim a few years back but I dont think I ever tried changing what part of the body a mesh worked with just size & geometry tweaks to bodge two head items together.

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[Perraine]

You could use almost anything really. Changing the body part data association is 5 secs work in FO4Edit or the CK.

 

The bandana would work, but I'd have a look at some of the armor pieces added by the Nuka World DLC. There are several "arm" armor pieces that could be easily retextured to be an armband, with the added benefit that they are already the right shape and size, plus they already have the .ssf morph data files associated with them (which Outfit Studio "should" pick up)

 

Outfit Studio is your best bet for basic (and even semi complex) modifying of meshes like resizing, reshaping, re-positioning etc.

[Yodhrin]

Brilliant, thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I'll read up on Outfit Studio and have a look at those Nuka World items.