n.dds and s.dds

[suspectedanarchist]

I need some help on how to generate the n.dds and s.dds which im almost 100 percent sure make the texture not shiny and gross. If anyone can tell me what is should do it would be greatly appreciated.

[G4M3W1NN3R]

n.dds = Normal map - the detail of the texture

 

s.dds = Specular map - the shinyness and colour reproduction of the texture

 

i am no expert on texturing however, but i do know a little bit.

 

are you creating the texture from scratch, or is it ported from another game/ free resource/ etc etc

 

if its the former i wont be able to help with that, as that requires Blender or other 3d Modeling Tools, however if its the latter, as in you already have them and wish to apply them to the texture, then i may be able to help. if it is indeed ported or part of a free resource they should of been included with the texture, then you would need to use Material Editor, to apply the maps to the Texture:

 

Material Editor: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/3635

[StormWolf01]

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/8018718-help-with-dds-files/

theres some discussion in this thread also, about what editors work with some of these files. Some of it is kinda surprising.

knowing what kind of object you are wanting to put these on may also help get you some more answers. As well as what Gamewinner said about whether this is vanilla assets, or from a mod, or a different source alltogether.

 

also, what do you mean by gross? Do you mean the shiny look is gross? Do you mean the rust on the guns is gross? All the crud on the power armor is gross? All the dirt on settlers is gross?

All of these are really different factors, and not all of them are related to the same things.

 

This I know from working with DAZ. Specular is a transparency layer, of sorts. It adds reflection to a surface. Meaning, that is exactly what makes it "shiny". Too much reflection, and a people model for example, looks like a plastic baby doll that was dipped in clear oil.

I know almost nothing about ENB's, so I don't know if those can have any effect on some of this, but I DO know that some of the lighting effects that can be edited in the ,ini files, can effect it. Which ones, I dunno. Some of those terms, I would need a translator to know what they refer to.

[icestormng]

Normals (_n.dds) are usually details baked down from a high poly mesh onto the low-poly mesh. It contains smaller bumps (sometimes also called Bump Map) and roundings to make your lowpoly model look better (almost as good as the high poly one). They're not painted in software like photoshop as they contain vector data.

 

The SpecGloss map (_s.dds) is used for specular (strenght of reflection) and glossiness (inverted roughness) of your object. The red channel is specular level, the green channel is glossiness. As FO4 uses PBR rendering, you have to differntiate between metals and non-metals. Metals get their color from specular reflections and cube mapping. They're black on diffuse. They're usually bright red to bright yellow on the SpecGloss map. Non-metals (wood, plastic, painted! metals ,rust) get their color mostly from their diffuse map (_d.dds). They're either dark red (rough eg. wood) or bright green (shiny smooth plastic) on the SpecGloss map.

 

This is nothing really specific to Fallout but general PBR SpecGloss workflow.

 

Substance has a good explaination on that topic.

https://academy.substance3d.com/courses/the-pbr-guide-part-2

[suspectedanarchist]

I should have clarifed what i wanted to to do my bad. I made some custom graffiti for an upcoming mod that has a player home and random graffiti round boston. I needed the extra 2 for the spray paint decals. so it should not relfect and look like any other graffiti in game.

[StormWolf01]

Oh cool, sounds like an interesting project!

Beyond knowing a tad bit about what they are, and what they do, I'm afraid I don't have any practical knowledge on how to make them. I've only messed around with settings that affect them in a render.

Ice posted a good link, if you understand what it's talking about.

Having some idea of which software tools you have at your disposal, or what you'll be working with, will help to get you advise. As many of these programs have completely different functions and workflows. Searching for tutorials for those specific softwares would also most likely turn up good results for ya ;)