LE Texture Problems

[Natterforme]

Ok, so I am in the beta stage of my Daedric Mage armor release and I have run into a snag with the textures.

 

The textures are too glossy and give off the appearance of being made of plastic. The light also reflects too severly off of the meshes that have custome retextures. I am using the stock vanill high rez textures as a base for my retextures. I dont know why this could be happening, since I am not doing anything special in photoshop. The texture is also peppered with holes which you can see through even though the mesh is solid in every way. I thought it might have something to do with an alpha property but some of the affected meshes dont use alpha properties.

 

If someone could give me some advice on what are considered good or 'safe' settings for photoshop texture files, I would be really greatful. I know it is probably a settings issue but I just dont have the experience to know what it is.

 

Here are some images of my problem:

 

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/14240-1-1333421567.jpg

 

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/14240-2-1333421568.jpg

 

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/14240-3-1333421569.jpg

[Korodic]

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/635667-modded-items-are-too-shiny/

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/612673-modified-a-texture-but-too-shiny/

 

I searched. :thumbsup:

[Natterforme]

Will begin testing.....

 

Can anyone help me on the holing that is happening through the texture? Its as if someone took a shotgun to my mesh but I know it is a texture problem.

 

And thanks Korodic^^.

 

-Natterforme

Edited April 3, 2012 by Natterforme

[Natterforme]

Ok. I found out that I could remove the extra shiny look simply by using default normal maps provided with the vanilla game. It removed a lot of my problems but has several drawbacks. This will be useful for textures where only colors are changed but will not be very useful for completely new textures or heavily altered textures. I am not really sure how to go about on this one.

 

The good news is that it has been narrowed down to a normal map issue, or, at least, this is my current impression at the moment. The holes in the texture map are still a problem though and make the texture look like swiss cheese. I think this has something to do with the texture being mostly black but I dont know why it is doing this. Can anyone help with this problem please?

 

-Natterforme

Edited April 4, 2012 by Natterforme

[Ghogiel]

As mentioned in those threads linked above, the specular map is stored in the normal maps alpha channel.

 

I don't understand this holes thing though. Is it visible in the images in the first post?

[Natterforme]

It should be. But in case it isnt, here is a closer look:

 

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/14240-1-1333556082.jpg

 

You can clearly see through the mesh and it is filled with holes in Nifskope. To be clear this is a texture problem. The mesh is solid.

 

On another note. I am having problems adding new gloves that use the DB mage glove as a base with male hands. The hands are black and the gloves hide the outfit(in image the outfit and the gloves are equipped but it does not cause a CTD). The glove mesh appears fine though and both meshes, the hands and the gloves are weighted correcty( they dont stretch in a weird way and they move with the body properly). I am guessing that this has something to do with the fact that it is skin but I dont know what to do to make it work properly. Any tips on this end? If I can get this part squared away, I will have all of the pieces prepared and I can begin branching out into the Orc and beast races, as well as the female version. After that my mod will be ready for publishing( since I have had some testing done to make sure that the items are craftable and work ingame).

 

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/14240-2-1333556084.jpg

 

I would also like to add a glow map to parts of the textures as well so if I could get some advice on how to go about that that would be great too^^.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

-Natterforme

Edited April 4, 2012 by Natterforme

[clintmich]

I find photoshop is buggy with textures sometimes. I use Gimp without a hitch. Try that.

[Ghogiel]

Ok I see the little holes. I am guessing it's either the diffuse maps is bugged, it has an alpha channel/alpha property. Not sure.

 

 

As for the glow map, you need to set emissive color in the objects material to white for example, to make it 'glow'. Then to get glow maps to work.. Use the glow shader type, Enable sf_glow_map shader flag. And then put your glow map in the appropriate texture slot (the 3rd one, (2:glow\skin))

[JDFan]

Ok I see the little holes. I am guessing it's either the diffuse maps is bugged, it has an alpha channel/alpha property. Not sure.

 

 

+1 - Photoshop has a tendency to get a peppered alpha channel in the dds when resaving a previously compressed texture -- open the diffuse texture and check the alpha channel and you'll probably see a bunch of black specs on it (this is what is causing the see through holes) -- If not using the alpha channel for some transparency then just save the texture without an alpha channel ( DXT1) or if using the alpha clean up the alpha channel by removing those black specs.

[Ironman5000]

I haven't used photoshop in a few years now I always use Gimp for modding with no problems, but depending on your texture layout why not try opening in Gimp (if you haven't got it already it's a free program) and duplicate the layer then merge. If you have necessary alpha properties in the texture such as frilled edge of some kind of frilled edge maybe just try selecting the area thats buggy and copying the selected are to a new layer and merging - might be problem if the texture uses transparency to show _sk maps.