Modding help please! [Transparent armor)

[Callmeflare]

Hello fellow modders! I was wondering: how could you make parts of armor transparent (Not see through; showing skin instead of armor) ? I've looked at some other guides to do so and I couldn't seem to understand them. A very detailed description of how to do it or a video would be much appreciated. Thanks! Edited May 26, 2012 by Callmeflare

[soulslayerzx]

Not sure if you know the texture stuff about skyrim, but this technique only worked on certain armors for me.

 

So I used the Fall out 3 manager archive to extract stuff from the textures.bsa

 

Say I extracted some suit. It came with the suit.dds and suit_n.dds

 

I'd open the suit.dds

 

You could go check out some videos of alpha transparency, but from what I know it's just an extra channel that tells games what to make transparent and what not to

 

So go to the channels tab next to the layers tab in the bottom right hand corner of photoshop.

 

There might already be an alpha channel if the suit had some semi transparent or transparent parts.

 

Remember white color on the alpha channel means 100% visible and black means 100% transparent.

 

So, just make the parts you want transparent black and the parts you want visible white.

 

If there isn't already an alpha channel in the suit.dds, make one by hitting the button that looks like the icon of adding a new layer except you're adding a new CHANNEL not layer.

 

Then, it should work. I can't guarantee this will always works since it didn't work for me once in this one texture which was strange, it might've been something to do with the mesh (model file) itself or some settings in creation kit I missed that didn't allow talpha transparency.

 

At last, if you don't want to replace some other texture, go check those creaiton kit tutorials on youtube on how to make new armors for skyrim. Just duplicate the original armor since you're using the same mesh, make a textureset entry for your custom texture, and put it onto the mesh, and hit okay, and click create a new form, if u dont want to rename(which is same as replacing in this case) the armor.

[Perraine]

What program are you using for image editing?

 

Also, some (actually most) armors and clothing do not have a 'body' inside/underneath them, so if you make a part invisible, like removing the arms, then all that will appear in game is an armless armor ...

To be able to have a 'body' show underneath, you have to 'add' a body to the armor mesh or basically merging 2 complete meshes together, without some extensive knowledge of 3D editing and 3D programs you usually end up with very poor results with awful clipping issues ...

 

If you use Paint.Net for image editing, have a look at this thread ...