My war paints look terrible in game, also need help with non-replaceme

[zurrgo]

I'm totally new at doing any type of modding for Skyrim. I'm trying to make some custom war paints. Whenever I go to see them in game, they look stretched out, pixelated, and ugly. Its most noticeable starting from the mid-forehead area to the bottom of the nose, as well as at the bottom of the lip. All custom war paints that are not my own look fine. I've tried saving them as the normal resolution around 250, as well as at 1024 and they look like the same, hideous things.

 

Could I be saving, or "packing" the dds file wrong? I choose the first option that my DDS extension for Photoshop gives me, and I'm kind of weary of messing around with it because I don't know what I'm doing. Besides that, I'm at a loss at what it could be.

 

Also, I'm having some trouble finding a tutorial or something to help me save my warpaints as non-replacement files. I'd appreciate any guidance in the right direction! Thank you!

[rarborman]

There are test patterns out there you can save to get a good idea of how the mesh deforms its texture, normally just even grid patterns, besides maybe compensating or increasing your resolution (pixels per area), I'd have to have a look at your textures and maybe your dds to tell you anymore advice.

 

I think to make new textures for actors you have to set their race to be able to use it or something... not very skilled at it myself, but I've seen some mods do it and overwrite others that do face textures.

Edited October 29, 2012 by rarborman

[nuska]

The distortion has little to do with DDS formatting and more with character facial mesh deformation. As vertices are moved according to head morphs, the UV also gets stretched out and that often results in pulled textures around the eyes, cheeks and down the center of the forehead. Avoid putting a lot of war paint detail in those spots. There are other workarounds but that involves advanced on-mesh texture painting inside a 3D application, and even that isn't foolproof when you go into racial head morphing. Edited October 29, 2012 by nuska

[zurrgo]

The distortion has little to do with DDS formatting and more with character facial mesh deformation. As vertices are moved according to head morphs, the UV also gets stretched out and that often results in pulled textures around the eyes, cheeks and down the center of the forehead. Avoid putting a lot of war paint detail in those spots. There are other workarounds but that involves advanced on-mesh texture painting inside a 3D application, and even that isn't foolproof when you go into racial head morphing.

 

I understand how the mesh can morph my 2d texture, but its mine specifically that really has a problem. I've downloaded other warpaints, and they don't look quite as bad as mine do. It is ridiculously rough to try to compensate for the morphing, and there has to be a way to do it that isn't totally guesswork and blind. I don't want to avoid those areas, because those are the areas my warpaints focus on. I've seen others that put things in those areas, I just don't know what I'm doing wrong

 

There are test patterns out there you can save to get a good idea of how the mesh deforms its texture, normally just even grid patterns, besides maybe compensating or increasing your resolution (pixels per area), I'd have to have a look at your textures and maybe your dds to tell you anymore advice.

 

I think to make new textures for actors you have to set their race to be able to use it or something... not very skilled at it myself, but I've seen some mods do it and overwrite others that do face textures.

 

The textures can be set per race, or it can be set per gender. There is a basic female head and male head set, and of course with each race it morphs, but they're morphing in odd ways that are the same across each race. So its not like my nord woman's morph looks different than a dark elf. I'll see if I can find some gridded maps specific to skyrim meshes like you've suggested and see if I can work with that. I'll upload some screenshots in a little bit, I'm going to take a look at some more modded warpaints and see if I can figure out what I'm not doing that other people are.