Putting a custom Shield into Skyrim? (plus some textures questions)

[Pioldes]

Hi, I've been wanting to experience Skyrim's engine and be able to create some custom weapons and stuff in the future. First of all, I can't seem to find a tutorial explaining how to import a shield into Skyrim. I've already tried this tutorial for my sword

 

 

It does work and appear in-game (replacing the iron sword). Thing is, I tried similar steps for the shield, and it's simply not showing up in-game (replaced the Steel Shield, the game recognizes it, but it's invisible). I assume I should follow an armor tutorial of some sort, but there's quite a few differences in the NIF properties and I am quite confused, as it's my first try with the engine. What should I do?

 

Second of all, I have a couple general texturing questions.

 

If I understand correctly, the specular map is stored inside's the Normal Map Alpha?

 

For the reflective surfaces, I understand that I basically have to do a grayscale map of what's reflecting or not and save it as myshield_em.dds ? Adding to that, where would the cube maps be located in the Skyrim Textures? The reflection didn't show up for my sword, but that may be because I didn't extract any cube map from the texture .esp

 

Last of all, I'm a bit confused about how to make the middle blade seam completely disappear. To my surprise, I discovered that most longswords in-game actually are cut into two UV isles. It sure does maximise UV space, but I'm struggling to make the seam disappear, and I only have my Normal map + a Diffuse that only contains the occlusion so far. I fear it will be worst once I get to the actual texturing. Any tips on that?

 

Thanks a lot!

[Pioldes]

So, I worked on my sword's texture quite a bit and I was able to put it semi-working in Skyrim. The whole specular/reflectivity/colors are still wrong, but I'll get to it soon. I did not succeed in importing the scab with the textures. Whatever I do, the scab texture never shows up in NifSkope.

 

Also, I'm following a tutorial that replaces the iron sword with what I'm doing. Thing is, I'd much rather have a unique sword with my own stats and all. Any tutorials on how to do this?

 

http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/208938WIPSword.jpg

[ghosu]

Hi...just upload nif+textures and post link, i'll check it. greetings

[Pioldes]

Check for the scab issue? Or my texture maps & all?

 

Because for the texture it's pretty much what you see there, the spec is in the Normal Map alpha and I have another map (similar to the spec) for the cube map reflection.

Edited November 24, 2012 by Pioldes

[ghosu]

scab issues

[Pioldes]

scab issues

 

 

My link

 

There you go!

 

Basically, this is my sword and scabbard NiTriShape pasted on the iron sword nif to test it out. I still haven't got around making it a stand-alone sword, but I'm only testing to see if everything looks good in-game. I also removed the blood objects, I'm going to get to that later too.

[ghosu]

Without testing it ingame, but this might be the cause: 2 issues, just change values to 10 and 5 and face normals:

http://666kb.com/i/c9a8g1pm6gowlsm0m.jpg

[Pioldes]

Without testing it ingame, but this might be the cause: 2 issues, just change values to 10 and 5 and face normals:

http://666kb.com/i/c9a8g1pm6gowlsm0m.jpg

 

 

I did it, noticed a small change in the smoothing of the scabbard, but the texture is still not showing up.

 

I'm probably forgetting something stupid or doing something wrong, It's my first try at that, and I'm still not sure what everything does : s

[ghosu]

Well ok at least it fixed a problem that you would run into later...am i wrong or are there no scab textures in the package you uploaded?

I'll take a ingame look at your files, but need these first.

[ghosu]

There is something wrong with the UV map of your scabbard...best option to test your file for an error like this is Nifskope, Menu, Spells=>Patch=>Update (alltangent spaces). Gives you an error message, and when you click on the scabbard's NiTriShapeData you'll see that NUM UV SETS is 0, normally it is 1 or 4097. When you rightclick on NiTriShape => TEXTURES => EDIT UV you normally see the uv map. Works with your sword but error when opening the scabbard.

 

If NUM UV SETS is 1 it's okay and you have to change it to 4097 (to get the normal map working).

If it is 0, like in your case, there is something wrong, normally it got trashed when you imported the mesh.

 

I would recommend NifSkope rc4, newer versions tend to trash the UV map (at least in combination with C4D or Blender), and reimport the mesh - and do the things i mentioned before (changing the values in the right line so it looks like the original file so the game recognizes the weapon and scabbard)

 

greetings