If you mod armor

[gamefever]

Hey armor modder's,

 

So I've binged through a ton of Tuts and have finally gotten an armor through Nifskope->Blender->Nifskope->Skyrim. Hurray!

My armor doesn't have a functioning texture that's mapped properly yet, and I'll be trying Nifskope RCN 4 version to try to get it into Skyrim fixed. I'm thinking I'll use photoshop to make the textures, I've come to realize that I altered the UV too much to use the exsisting stuff anyway.

 

So I have questions

Can I use Blender to make a Normal?

 

Other than piece swapping with Nifskope which I've picked up on really fast :D

 

What's the best entry point to making and getting the process to be second hand?

-simple clothing?

-converting an armor to another body type looks tedious, I've kinda already been doing that by just trying to get the pants to fit so there not floating on the armor I'm changing.

-Full on original?

-Something else that I'm not thinking of???

 

It's taken me a lot of time to get this far and I want the process to go a little faster, I figure that comes with practice so tips would be apprecaited.

[dragonslayer2k12]

I am considering the next step of modding myself which is modelling and I have heard that the better way to texture stuff for skyrim is to run the model through mubox software. That software lets you make the normal maps have that extra shade like the default textures have and not just lines and bumps like the photoshop filter does. Also it should be faster to use mudbox because you can literally paint the textures on the model where you want them instead of following the uvmap in photoshop so you don't spend time in photoshop anymore unless you want fancy filter effects for details.

[ghosu]

Even for Mudbox you need a good UV Map so you can't just skip the UV unwrap process IF you want many details on your model. Like the normal map, the normal map is more or less just a texture so when your UV map is crap or auto generated you can't project many details on it...though newer versions of sculpting software come with Ptex technology (from Disney Studios) so you can paint your mesh without UV map, it just simulates one and you can add as many details as you want.

 

But it's a whole new system with different file format of course, Skyrim doesn't support it...but you can paint your stuff using Ptex, you can simulate 10k+ textures or whatever you want, use it as storage format to save ALL details, create UV maps for your game model and extract the a texture with only a few details (512) or one with 2k+. It's nice to have but not sooo useful atm when it comes to texturing for games...but it would be great if games could support this format.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSuZrGSuUU4

 

Ok, enough OT...sry, but i love such little fancy technologies :D

 

To your normal map question...there are several ways to get one. A normal map is used to simulate details, that need many polygons on a mesh with less polygons. So normally you create a low poly mesh that is used in the game with lets say 1k polygons and a high poly version with 1M polygons - then you sculpt all your details on the high poly version and transfer these details to your low poly model. Afaik Blender uses the common BAKE method as well, in fact you bake your texture/normal from the high poly to the low poly version. There should be plenty tutorials 'bout baking on youtube.

 

Another way is to use sculpting software like Mudbox,zBrush or Sculptris (free), import your low poly model, add more polygons and create all details and just save these textures/normal map/gloss map whatever - my favourite way. Some normal 3D editors support sculpting as well.

 

And another way to create a normal map is to use GIMP or PS to fake one using the Nvidia DDS plugin, you just load your texture and the plugin generates the normal map by guessing...in fact it uses the contrast to generate one. A white pixel next to a black pixel = big height difference on the normal map. So you can imagine that the faked normal map is not as accurate since it has nooo idea 'bout the real shape, it just simulates the whole thing.

 

Before i would start with real armor i would recommend to practice all common techniques on a very simple shape like a cube or plane.

 

greetings

Edited October 6, 2012 by ghosu

[gamefever]

Thankyou again Ghosu,

I'm downloading Sculptris right now.

[CanisRex84]

I have to say I am a big fan of Ghosu's third suggestion, I find using the Nvidia DDS plugin is very easy and produces some fine results..