Help with textures.

[mewmew34]

Ok, I am very confused already. I'm wanting to have recolors of rings so I can have silver and sapphire and silver and emerald rings, along with all the other combos that are missing. I made a request in the request forum, but after looking up a few tutorials I'm going to give a shot at doing it myself, just to see if I can. But, I'm already confused. I downloaded the latest version of Gimp and the plugin to open DDS files. I can't find texture files for the different ring types (Gold Emerald, Gold Sapphire, etc.). There is only rings.dds which looks like an intricate gold ring, and Genericrings.dds which looks like a silver ring with a gemstone. Which file am I supposed to use, and am I supposed to color the gemstones on each ring myself? Had hoped I could just recolor the band and leave the gem alone. I don't get how there are only these two files for all the different ring and gem combos.

 

I'm probably missing something obvious but I'm just not sure what. Seems this should be the easy part and doing all the rest should be hard, but watching some tutorial videos making the new items and assigning crafting recipes seems fairly simple. So I just have to figure out the texture thing now.

[tredmillion]

okay first off, there are mods that fill in these missing ring types out already and have been since roughly a month after release (lookup jewelcraft, that should have what ya need if i rememer right)

 

but even if its already out there, i think you should try it yourself :)

 

so when i work with textures i use 3 main programs, firstly i use nifskope to examine the structure of the nif file, check that the pathway to the textures is correct and a few other things. and as you say gimp with a .dds plugin (make sure the plugin is installed right) and i also use FOMM (unless you have FNV or FO3 installed you'll probably have to copy the tesv.exe and rename it to FalloutNV.exe to make fomm work, this fools it into thinking you have FNV or FO3 as skyrim isnt supported for it) to extract the vanilla models and textures from the .bsa files (theres one called "Skyrim - Models" and another called "Skyrim - Textures" these are fairly self explanatory and are where you will find all vanilla assets.

 

now to your personal project go to your skyrim data folder, find the 2 .bsa files i mentioned earlier and open them, then look through them to find the .nif file of the rings that you wish to edit and then the .dds files that match the .nif files (in nifskope you can look through the nif extensions to see which folder pathway it takes the textures from) in this case the place to look in the .bsa file is "Meshes (or textures) > Armor > Amuletsandrings"

 

once you found all the files you need and extract them to a nice easy place then i'd open up the .nif file and then right click on the model and select textures, then click export template....using that template (you can just bung it over the .dds file and make it slightly transparent) you can see where each bit of the .dds file maps to on the model, making it a lot nicer to work with (also some models can draw different bits of the texture from different .dds files and not all of the .dds file is used so you can see which parts are used with this template too) then just use gimp to your hearts content to edit what you will ( if you have the .nif file open in nifskope and have changed the file path to show the texture that your currently working on then you can keep checking up to see how what your doing in gimp is effecting the model :)

 

 

anyway i hope that helps, if you need any further clarification or help with anything just ask me :)

[IsharaMeradin]

Here is what you can do.

Open Creation Kit

In Object Window go to Armor > Armor Addon

Locate an entry for one of the rings you want to copy/modify

right click and choose edit

make a note of the mesh (nif file) that is assigned

Exit Creation Kit

 

Open BSAOpt (or other BSA extractor program)

Extract the Skyrim - textures.bsa & Skyrim - meshes.bsa files --- you can put it loose in the data folder but to not screw up any replacers you might have it would be better to use a "clean" workspace directory somewhere

 

Open NifSkope (download & install if necessary)

Locate & load up the nif file you made note of in the Creation Kit from the extracted BSA files

In block list (top left) locate and expand each NiTriShape and then expand the BSLightingShaderProperty -- by expand I mean click on the little arrow pointing at the entry

You should see a BSShaderTextureSet, click once on it

In the block details panel (at bottom) expand the Textures entry

Make a note of these texture files

 

Open Gimp

Locate & load the texture files you made note of in NifSkope from the extracted BSA files

Make your changes

Export as DXT1 & generate mipmaps UNLESS you have transparency then export as DXT5 & generate mipmaps

 

TIP: If you are going to make a new item out of an existing item, before making any records in the Creation Kit go ahead and copy & rename all the associated files for that item (i.e. the nif & dds files) That way you can make your item in the CK with a renamed stock item and make sure all that part works before tinkering with the recolor. It is so much easier to have all that other out of the way so all you have to do is load up the game, console in the item & verify that it looks the way you want. Also this helps with GIMP as you don't need to export new and then pick the right settings, you can export back to the file you loaded from at all the proper settings.

 

Also note that there can easily be up to six meshes for any one item...

Male 3rd view

Male 1st view

Male world view aka inventory

Female 3rd view

Female 1st view

Female world view aka inventory

many times they share the same texture files, but that isn't always the case.

 

 

hope all that helps