Need help creating custom texture. Need advice

[nexus8226]

I am missing something but I am not sure what. What I am stuck on is changing the body texture. I want to make the texture a solid color or change it some noticeable way, just to get the idea of what I am doing. Then I can proceed with making a texture I want to. So what files should I be working with and what is the best way to do it?

[ShimoOkami]

I'm not sure how much you know about texture editing, so feel free to skip stuff if you already know about it. Also, I'm kind of unorganized when it comes to writing, but hopefully it'll still make sense.

 

First of all, you're going to need a program that can edit .dds files. If you have Photoshop, there's a plugin that lets you edit them which you can find here. There's other programs out there that you can get for free, but I don't use them so I won't be able to help you there.

 

The files you're going to want to look at are in the Data\textures\actors\character folder. There's male and female folders in there with self explanatory files such as femalebody_1.dds and malehead.dds. The files that have _msn or _s at the end of their names are the normal and specular maps. The normal map creates the illusion of fine 3D detail without the need to make a ridiculously high-poly model. The specular map controls how highlights are applied to the model. You don't have to worry about the normal maps unless you're doing something like adding fur or abs. You can also ignore the specular maps unless you feel that the skin looks too shiny, in which case you can just replace them with pure black textures. If you don't know how to extract files, just let me know.

 

Once you have extracted the textures you want to edit, make a backup copy of them so you don't have to re-extract them in case you decide to start over. You should also make sure you have a separate "working file" saved in your preferred format (for me it's .psd) in addition to your edited .dds and backup file that has all your layer data as layers are not saved in .dds format. It's a huge pain to go back and edit things when all your layers have been merged. Also, if you're using Photoshop (I'm not sure about other programs) you have to merge all your layers before saving as a .dds and make sure you have it set to generate mip maps otherwise your texture may not work properly.

 

You can start editing the texture right away, but I usually start my texture work by using a UV test pattern like this as my texture. This lets me get a good idea of how the texture gets stretched and compressed when applied to the 3D model as well as where the seams are. I take a bunch of screenshots from various angles to use as references so I don't have to boot up Skyrim too much. Getting the texture to show up in the game is really simple; just place your texture in Skyrim's Data folder with the same file structure and file name that you see with the extracted files.

 

Have fun, and let me know if I was unclear or you need help with anything.