_m.dds Photoshop

[kingchris20]

I've been scouring the web for the past 2 hours trying to find out how to make the _m.dds file, driving me bananas! I've been following the "Exporting meshes to Creation Kit" at the Creation Kit website, and all was going well until it got to "Part 3. Texture" where it says that 3 textures are needed .dds, _n.dds, and _m.dds, the tut goes on to give instructions on how to create these "3", but actually on gives instructions on creating the .dds and the _n.dds, which I was able to do.

 

So i went into NifSkope and got everything correct (except for the missing _m.dds of course), and the CK gives me the "Missing _m.dds" prompt, and the item comes up dressed in purple, like I supposed it would......If someone could let me know how to make that _m.dds file in photoshop, that would be great! Is it just some sort of filter that I need to apply to my texture (as the Normal map was) that I am missing somewhere? idk

 

Thanks.

Edited April 9, 2012 by kingchris20

[The SH0CKER]

The _m.dds is the environment mask and as such is a greyscale map where white would be 100% reflective and Black would be 0%.

[ghosu]

Just take the original texture, set the saturation to 0%.This would already work but in most cases there are plenty white areas that reflect pretty much so i would recommend to copy the whole layer (CTRL J), invert it (CTRL I) and set the layer blend options to MULTIPLY to get a pretty useable grey surface. greetings

[kingchris20]

Thanks guys, I set the saturation down, and it turned the image greyed (like its supposed to), I tried setting up the texture paths with the new _m.dds like that, but my model still showed up all black in the CK, so I tried the copy, invert, and setting the blend optinos to multiply, but that turned the texture completely black (I must have missed something), but I tried that _m.dds texture file, but the model still showed up all black.....I'm failing hard right now LoL

 

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I'll keep working at it...

 

Just to let you know.......... this is a completely new mesh created in Blender (a simple sphere) with a texture of the globe supposed to go on it, which this is just something as sort of a test to see if I can get a new textured mesh in game, its supposed to just be a clutter item as an earth globe (for no good reason other than just practice)

 

My steps so far - Created the sphere, uv mapped it, and exported it as an obj, loaded up NifSkope and loaded collisionmesh.nif, and then imported the sphere.obj onto it. went throught the steps to get it intergrated with the collision data, and then set up texture paths. The texture started as a JPG, which I cut out either side of the globe, and fit them on my UV map, saved that as a bmp file. Loaded the bump file and saved it as .dds with "DXT1 RGB 4 bpp no alpha" for the .dds, then loaded up the bmp file again and put the normal map filter on it saved it as _n.dds with "DXT1 ARGB 4bpp 1 bit alpha", then loaded up the bmp file again and set the saturation down and saved it as _m.dds with "DXT1 RGB 4bpp no alpha".

 

these were placed in data\meshes and data\textures and then pathed in NifSkope, then once I loaded up in the CK, the sphere was all black......

[kingchris20]

Is that tutorial wrong/reversed? Should the .dds be saved as DXT1 ARGB 4bpp 1 bit alpha

 

And then the _n.dds saved as DXT1 RGB 4bpp no alpha?

 

 

Cuz I think it has something to do with the way I'm saving as dds that's causing the problem.....

[ResolveThatChord]

I'd try DXT1, no alpha. It only needs one channel, which is why it's greyscale.

[kingchris20]

Ok, I'll try that, thanks

[kingchris20]

I figured out my problem, turns out it had nothing to do with what type of DDS I was saving as, it was the fact that I was trying to save it as a volume texture (default setting), when I switched it to 2D texture, all is working now!