SSE First time modding, trouble with new skin texture overlaying armor

[TessaXYZ]

Hi everyone!

 

This is my first attempt at creating a mod of any kind. Specifically, I am not a fan of the "Filthy" texture in Keep It Clean, so I made a new one by converting the DDS file in the original mod from BC7 to BC3, opening it in GIMP, saving it to PNG, editing in photoshop, saving it to PNG, converting back to BC3 in GIMP, and finally converting back to BC7. I then loaded it in to MO2, and it worked!... except the texture doesn't only affect the character's skin, it also overlays armor, which I don't want. The original mod does not do this. What did I miss in this process?

[Grospolina]

I don't know about the mod, but you shouldn't need to convert so many times. If you install Intel Texture Works Plugin for Photoshop, then you can open and save BC7 directly in Photoshop. If you have an older version of PS, then NVIDIA Texture Tools for Adobe Photoshop can work with BC3 (aka DXT5).

 

You could also use TexFactory or TexConvGUI to do conversions outside of PS. It's better to pick a lossless format like TGA.

Maybe you're missing the alpha channel? Have you taken a look at the optional dirt file for that mod?

[TessaXYZ]

I am indeed using TexConvGUI to convert from and to BC7. Unfortunately, I am running an old version of photoshop, and the NVIDIA tools didnt work no matter what I tried. Eventually I saw some comments that there are compatibility issues with Windows 10.

 

Thats why I settled on GIMP as an intermediary from TexConvGUI, which simply acts as a converter from BC3 to a format I can modify in PS.

 

Can you elaborate on the potentially missing alpha channel? Is there something specifically I need to do to ensure it is present in the final BC7 dds?

Edited November 28, 2019 by TessaXYZ

[Grospolina]

I see. I just checked and there's no alpha channel. However, there's transparency, which TGA doesn't really support (well, not easily), so I guess PNG it is. I did notice that the original DirtFX.dds and FilthFX.dds files are in DXT3 format, not BC7. Were these the files you modified?

 

TexConv can convert directly to PNG, but TexConvGUI is a bit awkward, and both versions that I tried didn't work. I find TexFactory much better and it can definitely do PNG.

 

So if you change the files back to the original, does it work fine again? It does seems really weird that they would be applied to armor when they didn't before.

[TessaXYZ]

It was my understanding that BC7 is preferred for SSE for reasons that aren't fully clear to me yet, but I didn't consider whether it was perhaps BC2 in the first place... And that's a good idea -- I'll try converting forward and back once and see if its the conversion process or my editing process causing the issue. I'll report back!