NifSkope body texture changes not showing in GECK or in-game.

[Fkemman11]

I followed a tutorial on how to make texture changes in NifSkope and they look fine there, but, not in the GECK or in-game. It is a female body nif that I am trying to put custom tattoos on. Is there a better tutorial on this anywhere or can someone give me a few tips? The file paths seem to be correct since it shows fine in NifSkope. What am I doing wrong?

[DrakeTheDragon]

You're trying to change a skin texture? But aren't these controlled by the race, not the NIF?

 

I know at least in Oblivion the material "skin" together with a keyword inside the name of the NiTriStrips/Shape ("upperbody"/"arms", "lowerbody"/"legs", "hand", "foot") controls which texture slot of the race that's currently wearing the item (yes, even body parts themselves are worn) should be used as the texture for the mesh.

 

Wasn't it the same in NV?

[dubiousintent]

FNV is closer to Oblivion than Skyrim (using the older Gamebryo engine), and the textures are indeed linked as described by @DrakeTheDragon. See the wiki article "How to fix hard-coded texture paths in NIF files" for the procedure to locate the texture file entry within NifSkope. (The path needs to be "relative" instead of "absolute"/"hard-coded" in order to be found on various installation locations, which is what that article covers.) But in short form the procedure is:
* Open the NIF file in NifSkope.
* Click on the part you want the texture for; it will highlight it in the Block list.
* Expand it and highlight BSShaderPPLightingProperty. Expand that.
* Highlight BSShaderTextureSet.
* In Block Details you will see textures (DDS files). Expand it.
* There you will see the paths to the textures used by that mesh.

Please see the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article for various tutorials on the many aspects of creating mods for the game. There are several sections that cover various aspects of what you are trying to do. Most likely is "Custom NPCs", but "Creature Creation" is related. However, the mod "Rivens Tatto Flash Sheets" has 61 sheets of various "free to use" tattoos and instruction on how to use them based upon the GIMP tool. (The "Getting started" article has a "Programs and Tools" section with links to GIMP among others.)

 

-Dubious-

Edited December 21, 2017 by dubiousintent

[Fkemman11]

Thanks to you both! It is a custom race that I am trying to change/add textures to. Thought it might be easy to do. Will have to read up on the how-to's. Changing body meshes is super easy though- once you know how. :happy:

[madmongo]

As DrakeTheDragon said, the body texture is controlled by the race, not by the nif. You need to change this in the GECK. NifSkope won't help you here.

 

You are probably going to want to create a custom race for your character, otherwise the tattoo will show up on every NPC who is a member of that race.

 

To create a custom race, open up the GECK, select the Race tab on the left, double click on one of the races to bring up the Race form, and now select one of the races to duplicate. If your tattooed character is Caucasian, for example, right-click on the Caucasian race and select Duplicate.

 

Important Note - Since the GECK is an evil vault-tec tool designed to test modder's frustration levels, it's important to note that the GECK, for no other reason than it's evil, has now decided to mark your original Caucasian race as modified, even though you haven't made any modifications to it, thus guaranteeing that your tattoo mod will conflict with any other mods that modify the Caucasian race. Stupid GECK. Fortunately, fixing this is fairly simple. You can use FNVEdit to remove the modified Caucasian race from your mod, or you can just save your mod, start up the GECK again, select Data, and instead of just selecting your new mod, highlight your new mod and select Details. There should be an entry for the Caucasian race. Highlight that and press Delete. This will mark the modified Caucasian race as not to be loaded by the GECK. Select Close, and load up your mod in the GECK. Now that your mod no longer includes the modified Caucasian race, save your mod, and now the modified Caucasian race is permanently gone from your mod.

 

Now that you have a modified race to work with, again select Race on the left side and double-click on your new race to bring up the Race form with your new race selected. Make sure you do not even click on any other race, or that race will be marked as modified by your mod (stupid GECK). Again, if you goof up and accidentally click on another race, you can mark it as deleted during load and get rid of it that way, or you can clear it out using FNVEdit.

 

Make sure the Playable box is checked. As long as you copied another playable race, it should be checked already.

 

Select the Text Data tab at the top of the Race form, and change the name of your race. If you don't do this, when you go to select your race during character creation, you'll have two races that both say Caucasian (or whatever race you copied) and you won't be able to tell which race is which. So change it to something like Tattoo Race or Caucasian Tattoo or whatever you want to call it.

 

Since you are only modifying the female body texture, check the Female box down at the bottom where it says editing (there is a box for Male and Female, and Male is checked by default).

 

There are four textures that define a human body: The body texture (includes torso, arms, legs, and feet), left hand, right hand, and head. All of these except the head are found on the Body Data tab. The default human bodies use the same texture for both the right and left hand. For my tattooed characters, I have given them custom tattoos on each hand and therefore have ended up with unique textures for both the left and right hands. Just click on Edit and select your new textures. If you are only replacing the body texture, then you only need to modify the Upper Body Texture and you can leave the hand textures alone.

 

Another important note: You only select the main texture file (i.e. upperbodyfemale.dds) in the GECK. The GECK, and the game, assume that the normal map and skin files are in the same folder, and have exactly the same name as the main texture, except with _n for the normal map and _sk for the skin. In other words, if your tattooed texture is called upperbodyfemale.dds, the normal map has to be upperbodyfemale_n.dds and the skin needs to be upperbodyfemale_sk.dds. If your tattooed texture is called tattoobody.dds, then the normal map needs to be tattoobody_n.dds, and the skin needs to be tattoobody_sk.dds. Typically, if you are only adding tattoos to an existing texture, you can just copy the _n and _sk files from the original body to the folder with your new tattoo texture. Each modified texture (body, left hand, right hand, head) that you have needs a matching _n and _sk file.

 

It should go without saying that all of these textures have to be somewhere in your Textures folder.

 

The head texture works the same, except it is under the Face Data tab instead of the Body Data tab with all of the other textures.

 

Once you have all of your modifications done and you have all of the files in the right place, you can click the preview boxes to look at your race's Head or Full view.

 

One thing to note - if you make changes to the head texture and preview it, further changes to the head texture don't always show up in the GECK. It caches a copy of your head texture and sometimes won't show any newer version in the preview window. You can shut down the GECK and reload your mod to properly preview your head texture changes if that happens. It will usually pick up modifications to the body texture if you preview again though. It's only the head texture that gets stuck (it has the same issue for textures for items and other non-NPC things).

 

If you are using a custom body for your player, you can select the nif for that on the Body Data tab as well. There is an Upper Body model, and a Left and Right Hand model. For hand and body nifs, all you need is the nif in your Meshes folder. Head meshes need an egm file as well, and the file name again needs to match. If your nif is CustomHead.nif then the egm needs to be CustomHead.egm, for example.

 

If all you are doing is adding a texture to whatever the default mesh is on your system for that race, then you probably don't need to worry about custom nifs. This is true even if you are using a body replacer, since the body replacers tend to place themselves in the same location as the default vanilla body nifs in the folder structure. In other words, if you are using say the Type 3 body replacer and your tattoo texture is for Type 3, you already have custom nifs in your Meshes\Characters... folder for the Type 3, and those are already what gets loaded by the GECK for each race type. You don't need to have a custom Type 3 nif for your character.

 

On the other hand, if you want a custom nif just for your character so that they use a different mesh than the default races, then you will need to specify a custom nif in the race in the GECK. Whatever body texture is defined in the nif ends up getting ignored by the game, though. The game will use the custom texture defined in the GECK instead.

[Fkemman11]

Wow! Thank you madmongo! That is very, very helpful- especially since I plan on using at least a dozen or so custom races. I'm taking the body by race mod a step(or two) further. Playing TTW and giving DC and NV a complete makeover. I don't have a rhyme or reason for how I do things- I want it to be random. For that to happen, I need to use as many different body meshes/textures as I can. If I ever release this, I will be sure to include you in the credits. :smile:

[madmongo]

If you are using TTW, be aware that TTW doesn't always play nice with custom races. You need to create a child race for your custom race and make sure that your custom race has that child race set properly, or else things get screwed up at the start with Vault 101 and again with Tranquility Lane. There are also some custom race fix mods to TTW that I think you need to install.

[Fkemman11]

Thanks. But, I think I found a way around those issues.

[dubiousintent]

@madmongo: Thanks for another excellent tutorial. (Even I could follow it. :devil: ) Added as 'TIP: Custom Race & Skin Textures' to the "Custom NPCs" section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.

 

As always, let me know if I mangled anything.

 

-Dubious-

Edited December 22, 2017 by dubiousintent