[LE] Textures and meshes

[Wildbrezecaesar]

Ok so i want to upload a mod to xbox for personal use. It retextures the glass armor. The problem is that there is no esp just a file with textures. So how do i make a esp for this in the essayist way?

[cumbrianlad]

Skip to Justinglen75's post which is much easier, if it works. If it doesn't, then come back to mine. Read mine FYI. It could come in useful sometime.

 

I'm not sure if there are differences in esp files for Xbox. It's quite a lengthy process to do what you want to do, the way I do it. you're going to need tools apart from creation kit.

 

BAE (Bethesda Archive Extractor) or similar

Nifskope

SSEedit

Paint.net or other photo editor (if you want to tweak the textures at all). Paint.net is free and has apps that can create and edit 'Normal' textures.

 

First go to Skyrim SE data folder add 2 new folders, one in Textures, the other in Meshes. Name them something unique I use my initials plus two letters relating to my mod, so for my Riften View mod I call the folders MBRV. You can use the same name for both folders. These are where you'll store your textures and meshes. Put your textures into the textures folder you just made. Later on, in Nifskope, We'll be directing Nifskope models to these textures and they need to be in a place where the game can read them. This is vital if you upload your mod anywhere. Later again, we'll be pointing forms in CK to the models you'll be editing. Same goes for that, they must be in a place where the game can read them.

 

Use BAE to extract all of the glass armor nifs to a new directory.

Open up the models one at a time in Nifskope. There will be a lot of them for each piece, since each one has more than one nif for both male and female characters. Some have additional nifs for the likes of Khajiit, Orc and Argonian races. I've just checked and there are 35 nifs for the glass armour. Not only that, but glass armour is worse than some because there are 2 parts for each piece, so 70 things may need to be edited in Nifskope. You will need to edit each of the tri shapes for each piece of armour.

 

Click on the the armour in the render window and the relevant tri shape will be highlighted in the left hand panel. Look below that until you see 'BSshaderTextureSet. Expand that and then expand 'Textures'. here you'll see three textures for each part. One is the 'diffuse' (the main coloured texture), the next is the 'Normal' (the very pale texture used to give an impression of 3D). The normal textures all end _n.dds. The last is a 'cubemap', that adds shininess to the piece. Cube maps end _e.dds. The author may have created new cubemaps or swapped them for another vanilla cube map. The normal map may be the same, or they may have tweaked that, too.

 

You need to right click on every one of these that are added by the mod and pick 'Texture', then 'Choose'. Find the texture in your textures folder that you made earlier and select it.

 

This may not be the end of your work in Nifskope but I don't know what the mod is, so I can't say exactly. It could well be that the person who did the re-texture edited some fields in the BSLightingShaderProperty as well as altering the textures. They may even have added glow textures and multilayer textures.. If they have, I can't advise you how to add those without a lot of digging. I can't say if they edited the shader property without seeing the nifs.

 

If the armour does not look like you expect it to at this stage, the author likely did alter the lighting shader properties, added multilayers, glows or maybe all of those. Without knowing the mod, I can't possibly say. let's just hope not!

 

Finally in Nifskope, from the spells menu at the top, select 'Sanitize' and do every one of them. Next, again from the spells menu, choose 'Optimize'. use 'Combine properties', 'Remove Bogus Nodes' and 'Remove Unused Strings'. Save the new nif in the folder you made in meshes. It doesn't need a new name but you can alter it if you like.

 

Rinse and repeat for the other 34 nifs.

 

Next, you're going to need to open CK and edit a whole lot of stuff to get the armour into the game.

 

I'm afraid there is no 'easy' way to do this.

 

If the armour is to be a replacer, it's a bit quicker. If you want it as a stand alone set it's much more complicated. I think you are looking for a replacer, so I'll set the basics of that out. If you decide it's stand alone, I could set that out when i've time.

 

For each of the 5 glass armour forms,you will need to edit the model at the top and replace it with your own. Then you'll need to edit its armour add-on. There are 8 armour add-ons to deal with, since there are 4 for the helmets (For the different races) a shield and the boots, gauntlets and cuirasse. There are a number of models that need to be swapped for your new ones in this form. Do them all, or it won't work for some races or sexes.

 

Back in the armour form you now need to delete the vanilla armor add-ons and replace them with your new ones.

 

You're done. Test.

 

Edit: I'm confused as to why there's no esp?

Edit 2: If you plan on doing more mods, it's a really good idea to extract every single Bethesda archive completely. So, meshes, textures, sounds etcetera. That way you can always access every item in the vanilla game, whenever you want to.

[cumbrianlad]

That post was a word wall... unavoidable given what you want to do. I thought I'd add this about Nifskope work separately.

 

As far as the BSlighting shader property goes, there are a couple of very likely fields that may have been tweaked.These are 'Specular Color', 'Emissive Color' and 'Glossiness'.Don't be shy about altering these if the model doesn't look like you expected after the texture changes.

 

Glossiness does what you'd think: it makes the armor more or less shiny. Emissive color will add light to the armor, so that it glows. Specular colour alters the colour of light that reflects from the armour. To edit these simply click on the colour wheel for each property. a little window with a triangle and circle will show up. Dragging the triangle around will make the colour a different part of the spectrum. Moving the little circle inside the triangle will select the shade and how dark it is. if you move this all the way to black in emissivity, for example, there will be no glow. Move it all the way to white makes a bright white glow all the way to the coloured part of the triangle makes a strong glow of that colour. You can put it anywhere else to get what you want.

 

You'll also see fields like 'specular strength'. you can edit the numbers in here to make the effects less or more intense.

 

If you fiddle with these, you may want to save more than one copy of the armour and test them all in game.

 

To save a bit of time in CK, if you do this, just do it for one piece, say the gloves and don't bother to do both sexes, just the sex of the character you're testing with. When you're happy, apply the same changes to all the other nifs. While Nifskope is great, it doesn't render the items exactly like CK and CK doesn't render them exactly like the game! I just did a set of gilded Imperial armour and I had to adjust the main texture several times before I was happy. likewise with the multilayer texture for my golden Nightingale weapons.

 

You've got a lot of work ahead, I'm afraid.

 

Edit: thinking about it it's extremely likely that the specular colour and strength have been altered, especially if the re-texture alters the basic colours of the armour.

 

have fun!

[cumbrianlad]

I keep thinking of things... nasty habit, that... I ought to stop it!

 

If you have glow textures they'll be pretty obvious. They are a small texture with a few very brightly coloured shapes set against a black background. The vanilla glass armour doesn't have any. To see how these are added, extract a nif and glow texture for a vanilla item that has them. The enchanting workbenches are a good example. In Nifskope, the glow texture is added to the third in the list of the textures where you added your new textures. That's true of Dawnbreaker, too, so I think that's where any glow texture needs to go.

 

What i don't know (never added glows) is if you need to do anything more than simply adding the texture. There are video tutorials out there that cover this, though. Maybe someone else here can tell you, if you need it.

 

The same applies to any multilayer textures (ending in _m). I won't go into details about how to edit multilayers unless you need it. Again, I've never added them, so I don't know if it takes more than just adding the texture. All I've ever done is edited them when they existed already and I didn't like them. Multilayers are used to control how much light is reflected from different parts of the item. They are always greyscale and the whiter the texture, the more stronglu light reflects from that part. This is really useful to add more of a realistic look. It's used on weapons and armour, but not on vanilla glass armour.

 

For a sword, for example, you can make the very edge of the sword reflect more light than the rest of the blade, whilst having the handle or any sword grooves darker.

[justinglen75]

As far as getting the mod on XB1, and the followering are true:

 

* Your files are just simple texture replacers -- using the vanilla filenames, meaning you aren't changing the filenames, AND

* Your files are already in your SSE game and in their correct vanilla paths/folders (ie. Data>Meshes/Textures folders)

 

1.) Create a new ESP in CK 64: Click on File>Data. Not sure how much it matters but it's not s bad idea to select the first 5 master files (Skyrim.esm - Dawnguard.esm) and click on OK.

2.) Click on File>Save and name your ESP (ie. Wildbrezecaesar-GlassArmorRetex.esp)

3.) Click on File>Log into BNET

4.) Click on File>Upload Plugin and Archive to BNET>XB1

* If you get a message that says "An archive might not be neccesary. Add files to an archive by hand?" then click on YES otherwise...

5.) A window will open up with "Add/remove files to archive" header at the top. Make sure Archive Platform says "Xbox One". Make sure it's blank -- you can highlight multiple files in the list and click on remove.

6.) In this window you can drag n drop just your re-textured files (that are already in their appropriate, vanilla directories like mods are placed -- ie. Data>textures>armor) over the window and they should appear

* as long as you kept the filenames exact to vanilla and the filepaths exact to vanilla -- in other words, if you're not changing anything other than the texture itself, this should work no problem.

* if you are opening the CK 64 as an administrator, DnD won't work -- uncheck Open as Admin in the CK properties.

* when all your files are in the list, you can click on Export List to save a list that you can import (using the Import option) so you won't have to DnD those files again.

7.) If all set, click on Pack Files and go through the process of uploading to BNET for Xbox.

8.) Go to the mod's BNET page and make sure you choose SAVE AS DRAFT -- that will allow for personal use only. PUBLISH of course means it goes PUBLIC. O

9.) On Xbox One: Open SSE, go to MODS, log into your BNET account, and then find a section that says MY CREATIONS and your mod should be there, visible only to you as long as you chose to SAVE AS DRAFT.

10.) Download your mod and enable, then set your LO (within the game) -- put your mod at the bottom so nothing overwrites it, then start your game to test and see if it worked :smile:

 

* Go to Data>XB1 folder and either backup somewhere or delete the archive stored here or the CK will crash if you try to create a new archive for this mod. You will have to do this every time, or a Windows batch file placed on the desktop to do this with a simple double-click.

* If you are using newly-renamed textures + meshes then it's pretty much the same process -- as long as the files are where they are supposed to be in the Data>Meshes/Textures folders, drag n drop the textures and the meshes they are associated with into the archive list box/window.

Edited January 12, 2020 by justinglen75

[cumbrianlad]

Justinglen75,

 

Much easier than my method. TBH, I've never done that, so didn't think about it.

 

They also know how to edit the things in Nifskope, too, which isn't a bad thing. (He says, in a vain attempt to justify the monster posts :mellow: )

[Novem99]

Texture replacers don't need an .esp at all.

[justinglen75]

Texture replacers don't need an .esp at all.

 

@Novem99 -- You're correct for the PC only BUT the original poster (OP) is specifically wanting to use the replacer for XB1. In order to get anything uploaded to BNET (especially for consoles) you have to create a plugin (ESP). The Creation Kit 2.0 (64bit) will not let you upload anything to BNET without saving/creating a plugin. A plugin (ESP) needs to be created for consoles (ie. XB1) so the in-game LO can be set. The OP probably needed to post this on the SSE/CK 2.0-related forums since I think this is an Oldrim-related forum.

Edited January 12, 2020 by justinglen75

[justinglen75]

@Cumbrianlad Even if, I think the information you provided is quite valuable in case they, or anyone else, wants a more advanced know-how. Good stuff! I just wish I could find a suitable, thorough-know-how on creating swords for SSE using Blender 2.8 for noobs like myself who want to delve into that. Probably another inquiry for a different forum hehe.

 

Justinglen75,

 

Much easier than my method. TBH, I've never done that, so didn't think about it.

 

They also know how to edit the things in Nifskope, too, which isn't a bad thing. (He says, in a vain attempt to justify the monster posts :mellow: )

Edited January 12, 2020 by justinglen75

[Wildbrezecaesar]

thanks to both justinglen75 and cumbrianlad for all the info. I got allot to work on lol