Texture layers

[Atreyu]

Why do texture maps have about 10 or 11 layers? I'm still new to texturing and am releasing a race mod soon on here, but I want to understand the texture layering so I can do it right. Each layer seems to have the texture have halved dimensions.

[Uriel]

That's mipmaps.

[Atreyu]

Ok, how do I make them?

[gregathit]

Ok' date=' how do I make them?

[/quote']

 

You don't "make" them in the strictest sense. When using Gimp or whatever texture program you are using, you need to save your file in a dds format (Dxt5 or Dxt1) and click the option to "generate" mipmaps, which it will do as it saves the file.

[Atreyu]

I don't have that option in gimp. I have to make it DXT5 in DXTbmp.

 

Edit: Nevermind. I check the first skin I worked on and it does have the mipmaps. I don't know how, but I must be doing something right.

[gregathit]

I don't have that option in gimp. I have to make it DXT5 in DXTbmp.

 

Edit: Nevermind. I check the first skin I worked on and it does have the mipmaps. I don't know how' date=' but I must be doing something right.

[/quote']

 

Do you have a really old version of Gimp or something?

Anyway if it is generating them then all is well.

[Atreyu]

I do have an old version of gimp. I'd rather use that version, because I can't find a compatible DDS plugin for the new one.

 

Edit: After learning about this stuff, I played around with an eye texture that I had planted the iris into an eye texture with less blood shot. Now I know how to save it as DXT5 AND generate mipmaps in gimp. This is a big step in my modding endeavors. Using dxtbmp to shrink everything was tedious and was taking too long.

[Atreyu]

Here's another question. Say I'm working on eyes, and I want them to glow. How do I generate glow maps?

[movomo]

Here's another question. Say I'm working on eyes' date=' and I want them to glow. How do I generate glow maps?

[/quote']

 

Basically you have two ways to go.

 

1. You can make glow map with grayscale & no alpha. None-black means that part will glow with some color. You can adjust their colors from NifSkope, just set NiMaterialProperty\Emissive color to your desired color. This way you can save a lot of disk space. You need just one glow map and it will be applied to every color map in the same folder with similar name.

e.g.

eyes_g.dds

eyes_n.dds will be applied to

 

eyes.dds

eyes_red.dds

eyes_blue.dds ..................... and so on.

 

2. You can make glow map with RGB color, this will override any emissive color settings in .nif. If you choose this way you'll need more hard disk as it needs to be appended one to one, but you can make an eyes glow with rainbow color.

[Poontank]

Recently I've read something interesting about it here: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/86406-how-to-add-glow-maps/

 

What is this stuff about a Nif's 'emit multi' property? The not very detailed 'tutorial' mentions the Nif is getting 'corrupted'? How so?

To me it sounds like once a glow map texturing property is added, it will stay a part of this Nif forever. Or can it be harmlessly deleted anyway with 'Remove Branch'?

 

It seems this 'emit multi' parameter, once set, can't be changed afterwards? I ran into this problem recently with an armor's helmet that was extremely reflective, like chrome. The rest of the armor wasn't, the contrast looked just plain ridiculous.

 

Finally fixing it was a combination of a reworked mesh by the modder who made it and correcting the alpha channel of the (vanilla) normal map. Funny that the non-reflective armor was using the very same texture, just without the 'mirror effect' despite its normal map's alpha channel.

 

But this 'emit multi' stuff - nothing could be done about it in the original helmet's Nif. Actually it can't be edited in any Nif it seems.

Is this the 'corruption' that tutorial spoke of? Or the fact an additional texturing property is (irreversibly?) added? Confusing, to say the least.

"Fucking glow maps, how do they work?!"

[movomo]

...

What's going on? Is that tutorial for Oblivion or what?

(Ah, on reflection, that is FO stuff. I thougt it is related something of Oblivion.)

 

Errrr so you guys were talking about Fallout? Uh oh. Sorry.

 

In Fallout3 / NV / Skyrim we can assign different texture to the same mesh via geck, so things are more complicated than OB or MW. I don't need to populate a bunch of identical nifs for different colors but at the same time I can't use simple black&white glow map.

Aww.. feels like get heartbreak. There is simpler way to get glowmaps to work in Oblivion.

[Poontank]

I just didn't understand that it's a Fallout tutorial

Neither bothered clicking on the link at the top nor saw the pictures, they are suppressed for banned badass ex-members .

 

Not playing other games, that's why I'm only active in the Oblivion section here.

 

Found the tutorial when I was searching for an explanation to the mystery of an Oblivion armor Nif refusing to give up its glossiness no matter what I tried. Sorry for even bringing it up and causing confusion!

 

But I keep on finding Oblivion Nifs that do have two texture properties attached, one of them the glow map. The process of adding the glow map to a Nif seems to be the same as for other games that use this file format. In my recent case it was the other way around, to get rid of it.

[movomo]

But I keep on finding Oblivion Nifs that do have two texture properties attached' date=' one of them the glow map. The process of adding the glow map to a Nif seems to be the same as for other games that use this file format. In my recent case it was the other way around, to get rid of it.

[/quote']

 

Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure that Nexus had banned you for petty reason. Something related to x117 iirc? Anyway, I'm curious why you're trying to seek those 'nifs with two properties'

 

Is there particular reason to attach glowmap to the nif file? Why you should do that way while glowmaps are assigned automatically?

[Poontank]

Oh yeah' date=' I'm pretty sure that Nexus had banned you for petty reason. Something related to x117 iirc?[/quote']Nesux disappointment spoiler:

 

 

So true.

"He broke the rules." - They bent their own rules as much as possible to justify their moderator's lack of judgment. And then they went and banned a good friend of mine for nothing but mentioning my name in a forum comment, calling it "questioning a moderator's decision". Great.

 

Everybody I ever showed the picture that got me banned to can't believe it was the reason for an actual ban.

And their whole strike and warning system got debunked as a big joke as well. It's insta-ban for 'pedophile' criminals like me.

On a side note - the picture in question and three others like it are still online as thanks pictures for a mod... ROFLcopter ready for take-off!

 

But enough of that, otherwise it would seem like I had some sort of grudge or something .

 

It's not that I'm actively searching for such Nif files, they just keep popping up left and right, making me wonder as well why people would ever attach the file to the Nif itself. In the case of that armor I keep referring to the glow map was mainly used for the demonic eyes of the helmet. The shiny surface was only due to the normal map's alpha channel, I was just thinking it was the glow map's fault. Deleting the file didn't fix the helmet's mirror effect at all.

 

My lazyness to extract the necessary vanilla textures from the BSA was to blame, I was looking for a fix in the wrong place by messing around with the glow map and the Nif itself instead. That and the fact all material properties of shiny helmet and non-glossy armor were the same and yet the two objects looked so different. Still can't understand why these two pieces sharing the same texture and properties didn't look identical.

 

It was also the first time I ever actually noticed that 'emit multi' property at the bottom of the block details list.

[movomo]

My lazyness to extract the necessary vanilla textures from the BSA was to blame' date=' I was looking for a fix in the wrong place by messing around with the glow map and the Nif itself instead. That and the fact all material properties of shiny helmet and non-glossy armor were the same and yet the two objects looked so different. Still can't understand why these two pieces [i']sharing the same texture and properties[/i] didn't look identical.

 

It was also the first time I ever actually noticed that 'emit multi' property at the bottom of the block details list.

 

Ever looked their texturing properties? I assume you're reffering to 'reflective surface' when you say shiny (or glossy) surface.

 

You have several ways to make an armor shiny. The best example is vanilla glass armor. You can see that its NiTexturingProperty\Apply Mode is APPLY_HILIGHT, not APPLY_MODULATE.

 

If HILIGHT is applied, actually you don't even need glow map or EnvMap2(MaterialProperty) to 'polish' the armor, as long as you don't intend to make an armor literally glow. It already looks so reflective enough even without glow map.

 

Oh, and normal map alpha can also make them shiny, with different way. I don't think it looks good - as it looks like enchanted armors from Morrowind. But if the nifs in question share the very same normal map, definitely this is not the case.

 

It is also possible to 'assign' glow map to a single nif (although this is not the way Oblivion handle it) but I don't think this is the case, because if something else is assigned to TexturingProperty you wouldn't have missed it.