AurianaValoria1 Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 (edited) Hey guys! Just wondering if you could answer a quick question... How do you change skin textures on an armor to chainmail in NifSkope? And how do you get it to show up ingame? This used to be a piece of cake for me in Oblivion, but I'm having trouble finding things with Skyrim's format. Edited January 29, 2012 by AurianaValoria1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sader325 Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 Hey guys! Just wondering if you could answer a quick question... How do you change skin textures on an armor to chainmail in NifSkope? And how do you get it to show up ingame? This used to be a piece of cake for me in Oblivion, but I'm having trouble finding things with Skyrim's format. I may be speaking about something else, but I'm almost certain skins (on models) are wrapped using .DDS files, not nifskope. Nif files Apply premade textures to models, it doesn't generate its own. For instance my mod: http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/5600-4-1327368720.jpg is a retexture of elven armor. I replaced all the leather parts with chainmail by editing the DDS file the .nif file points to. http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111220203433/elderscrolls/images/thumb/c/c9/3588-1-1323809267.jpg/830px-3588-1-1323809267.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AurianaValoria1 Posted January 29, 2012 Author Share Posted January 29, 2012 (edited) That's what I mean: I want to change the skin texture to a premade chainmail texture, not edit the DDS. I have that mod, BTW. Excellent work. :) Edited January 29, 2012 by AurianaValoria1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ooofbaer Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 What do you mean by "skin"? Do you mean the character's skin? You can't do that, AFAIK. I don't know the proper terminology, but I'll try to explain anyway: what you can do is create new object around the limb, and then refer that object to a chainmail texture. Viz., you can't make bare forearms into chainmail, but you can make an object around them and then texture that object. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jet4571 Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 What do you mean by "skin"? Do you mean the character's skin? In some mod circles beyond the wide world of modding Bethesda products "skin" is used instead of texture. here its retextured but in some its reskinned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AurianaValoria1 Posted January 29, 2012 Author Share Posted January 29, 2012 What do you mean by "skin"? Do you mean the character's skin? You can't do that, AFAIK. I don't know the proper terminology, but I'll try to explain anyway: what you can do is create new object around the limb, and then refer that object to a chainmail texture. Viz., you can't make bare forearms into chainmail, but you can make an object around them and then texture that object. Yes, that's what I meant. Strange. Things have changed quite a bit since Oblivion, then. It used to be that the body texture on an armor model could be changed to anything premade by using NifSkope. Guess that's not the case anymore? :confused: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ooofbaer Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 It used to be that the body texture on an armor model could be changed to anything premade by using NifSkope. Guess that's not the case anymore? :confused: I don't know much about modelling. I'm going off of what I've read from tutorials. But it makes sense that they wouldn't instruct people to make extra objects if they could just change the skin... Why would you want to make the skin into chainmail, anyway? Where the mesh ends and the character's body begins, you'll get seams, and it won't look right at all. The transition from material to skin will be too abrupt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AurianaValoria1 Posted January 29, 2012 Author Share Posted January 29, 2012 (edited) I'm trying to help a modder with the Dynasty armor. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=7270 See the skin textures? The modder is making optional chainmail versions, but they aren't showing up ingame. There's chainmail Dynasty armors already out there but with different body types. This pack is for CBBE. I started this thread because I was really curious about how it was done myself. I like adding chainmail to otherwise skimpy armors. :P Edited January 29, 2012 by AurianaValoria1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghogiel Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 Easiest way would probably be deleteing the BSLightingShaderProperty on the skin mesh objects, and pasting in one off of steel or something. That should get you 90% of the way to the material working. Then on the skin mesh objects you need to set up vertex normals for tangent space normal maps to work right. in the TriShapedata block, set Has Normals to yes, Num UV sets to 4097, then spells>batch> update Tspace. Only things that could go wonky after that is vertex color and the environment map/mask and the respective shader flags. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perraine Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 The 'Skin' as in the actual bodies 'flesh' is a separate file from the the Armor texture file. You can have the armor show 'skin' (bare flesh under the armor) in several ways, the easiest way is to simply remove parts of the armor texture completely (like the 'leather' sections and then add an "Alpha Property" to the 'BSLightingShaderProperty' of the armor NiTriShape in the .nif, the game then interprets this to mean their is a 'whole' in the armor at that place and shows the default body (skin) texture instead. If you replace the 'leather' parts with a 'chainmail' texture on the Armor texture then that's what the game will show The best example of this technique is MaikCG's Daedric Armor Replacer What he's basically done is put three different armor meshes (or parts of them) into one .nif file and then using the "Alpha Property" method mentioned above, he has 'removed' the parts that weren't needed, it's requires the game to load 3 separate texture files to display that armor, but it works quite well. A more difficult way to do it is to completely build the armor with all new mesh pieces and textures, but that requires a lot of work in a 3D program ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts