Help With Getting Retextured Items Into Oblivion

[Triforce1]

Okay, the tools I am using are NifSkope, the GIMP, and the CS v1.2 . I unpacked my archives and opened the Glass Cuirass texture in the GIMP. I then proceeded to (as per the GIMP/NifSkope Retex tutorial on the CS Wiki) retexture the cuirass to be blue with some red highlights. I saved this as mycuirass.dds. I duplicated the cuirass_n and cuirass_g because since it was a simple recolor they would be staying the same. I then opened cuirass.nif in NifSkope, copied it as specialcuirass.nif, and applied the new mycuirass.dds to that new copy. My hopes soared because it looked perfect. I then continued to make (in similar fashion) the female version, _gnd version for both, and icons for both. I placed all of these things in their new respective folders under Oblivion\Data\Meshes[textures]\Armor\Glass\m[f]. After all of this, convinced that my first retexturing effort was actually going to work the first time around, I opened up the CS and chose to create a new piece of armor under Items - Armor - Glass. I set the name, worth, heavy[light], all other ratings (I did not enchant/script it), chose UpperBody in the list, and moved on to the .nif/.dds file placements. I put the appropriate files in the appropriate blanks, the icons showed up, and everything continued to go well. I then decided that for this mod I was going to sell it at A Fighting Chance in the IC. I put it in Rohassen's second Vendor's Chest (the one that has only the UniqueWeapon thing in it, not the scripted BladeVendor stuff). For good measure, I decided that she should be wearing the heavy version of the armor to show it off before the player buys it. Well, I removed the Iron Cuirass from her inventory and placed the new Glass Cuirass in it. It didn't jump into the render viewport so I chose Full Preview under her "Edit Base" menu. Well, my heart sank. The chainmail skirt thing that goes on that armor was all crooked, there was NO torso part to the armor, and the shoulder pads were crooked on one side and too high up on the other :blink: ! I didn't really get it, so I did an in-game run. I purchased the heavy version (identical except for armor value, weight, and price) and put it on. The exact same thing happened to me! And when I hit Tab to bring up the Player Menu, the mini-me looked the same way except it seemed that the shoulder pads were glued where they were supposed to go (relatively) while the skirt thing was flat, behind my person. When I rotated him, the skirt rotated also, but with no third dimendion and it stayed behing the mini-me! I can't tell you how ticked off I am (though you can probably guess) !!!

 

Now, here's the things I might could've done wrong. I count only two:

1) Used the same texture for both the male and female versions. They look correct in NifSkope, and you'd think at least the male version then (my player's version) would be right in-game, but nooooo...

2) The texture could've been opened wrong. When I open the .dds file by itself from my file (on Nero PhotoSnap Viewer), it comes up with two rectangles on top (left/right) looking the same and one big rectangle (underneath) that I take it goes with the skirt. When I open that same file from the GIMP, it shows only one of those top rectangles. That, in turn, was what I worked on and saved as the texture.

 

Confusing things:

1) If it looks great on NifSkope, why not in-game?

2) Why does the GIMP only open up that condensed version of the texture?

3) Both the icons and the dropped armor in-game look exactly like they should; it's only when someone wears the armor that it goes crazy.

4) Why the heck did I put so much stuff into this "Help Me!" post? :D

[Vagrant0]

Can you upload a screen shot of the armor... A picture is worth a hundred words. Just the ingame pic, and information about what specific mesh was used should be enough. As far as the .nif goes, did you do anything other than change texture paths? Add/remove pieces? When the armor is worn, does it move properly with the body? I think it might be related to some 1.2 bug, remember encountering something like this before when playing with a Dark Seducer armor retexture. It's been awhile, so can't remember exactly what I did to fix it.

[Triforce1]

Okay, one by one. As far as meshes, I used the exact same meshes that the glass armor uses (this being cuirass.nif, cuirass_gnd.nif under both f and m). The ground one works, but the worn armor doesn't. As far as changing paths, I put them all under Data as I should, through the appropriate paths. All I did aside from this was change the colors of the armor. The armor sorta kinda moves with the body; the shoulder things move from side to side, but the skirt thing kind of bunches up as it moves. Here's one picture; I have many more.

[Vagrant0]

Can't remember what I did to fix it, but think it was something with either the texture paths, or the actual texture. Maybe changed alpha, differently named _n.dds, wrong dxt mode. Dunno for certain, and have no idea why it would cause this issue.

 

Best advice would be to try again from the beginning, or try linking the standard glass texture to your current mesh. It's not a common problem, so it's probably caused by doing something unusual.

[Triforce1]

Linking the standard glass caused the armor to look like..well...like standard green glass with no problems. Here's what I think is wrong; you tell me. I've included pictures. The first is the original green cuirass.dds file for the Glass Cuirass. The second, blue and red one is my new texture. This is the way the GIMP imported that old texture in (only green), so that is the way I made it and assumed of course that everything was cool. I look forward to your aid.

[Vagrant0]

Ran into the problem again on my own today. It seems to be linked to the normal maps. If saved in DXT5 it seems to create this problem. Resaving it as DXT3 should fix it. Dunno exactly why it fixes it, but my guess is something with how the mesh is loaded into memory and how textures saved under DXT5 tend to be much larger.

[Triforce1]

I was obviously doing something I shouldn't have. I recently redid an entire set of Daedric Armor, and it turned out fine. This is just something I'll have to do again. Thanks.