How to give literal "Texture" to meshes?

[Pickle_Juice]

Hello guys! I've been making simple unanimated meshes for personal use for a while Furniture/Weapons, with custom textures and all, but one question i have, is how do you give models, Texture?

I mean, how do you make, shiny metal, look like shiny metal? or leather look like leather? or clean shiny wood look like... shiny wood?

 

Cause all the meshes with textures i've done and place on skyrim look flat, when adding normal maps they do have the normal map working but i still don't know ho to make things shiny and thing look opaque.

 

especially having a prop that have both shiny and opaque parts, let's say a wood club with nails.

How do i achive this? i haven't been able to find anything about it since i don't know how to call this proccess, any help would be apreciated!

[Just Don't]

Cubemaps. As an example you have this LE mod. You can also check this article about them. I'm not sure if this is everything you need to achieve the effect you want, or if the info in that article is up to date. I wish I could give you more details, but I'm not that into texture edits, let alone creating new ones.

[Kendo 2]

Vertext paint the parts of the mesh you want to be shiny white.  Paint the dull parts black.  Bake the normals and export as a png.  In Photoshop or GIMP go to the layers of the png and swap the red layer with the green one.  Export as dds and use the existing layers; do not generate new ones.  Use the DTX5 compression rate.  Test it in-game.

 

Cube maps are environmental maps. they add shine or reflection and that's it.  The don't add detail.

The body part of the suit has a cube map I made.  The ray gun has a baked normal.

[Pickle_Juice]

3 hours ago, Kendo 2 said:

Vertext paint the parts of the mesh you want to be shiny white.  Paint the dull parts black.  Bake the normals and export as a png.  In Photoshop or GIMP go to the layers of the png and swap the red layer with the green one.  Export as dds and use the existing layers; do not generate new ones.  Use the DTX5 compression rate.  Test it in-game.

 

Cube maps are environmental maps. they add shine or reflection and that's it.  The don't add detail.

The body part of the suit has a cube map I made.  The ray gun has a baked normal.

How do i Vertext paint? on GIMP? cause that's the one i use, also, do they work the same in fallout and skyrim?

[Kendo 2]

25 minutes ago, Pickle_Juice said:

How do i Vertext paint? on GIMP? cause that's the one i use, also, do they work the same in fallout and skyrim?

Vertext painting is done in Blender or 3DMax.  Oblivion/Fallout3/Skyrim/Fallout4 are all the same game as far as lighting mechanics go.  Bethesda might bolt on some new do-dads and claim whatever they want, but you can use a texture and normal map from Oblivion and they will work with FO4.

 

Since you're using GIMP here's a trick you can try:

*Open your texture without loading all of the mip maps and export it as a png with one layer.  Exit GIMP.

*Open the png you just made; on the top tool bar go to Colors/Desaturate and pick Lightness from the dialogue window.

*Go to Filters/Map and normal map.  When the dialogue window comes up select Filter 9x9.  Under Options check the 'Wrap' box.  Under Alpha Channel select 'Height'.  Leave everything else alone.  Click OK.

*Now export the png as a dds with the DTX5 Compression and Generate mipmaps.

*Test it in-game.

 

IF this works for you try playing with the Scale and Minimum Z when generating the normal map.  Fucking with these values too much will give you dubious results so be sure to keep a clean and unedited png of your texture as a backup.

[Pickle_Juice]

3 hours ago, Kendo 2 said:

Vertext painting is done in Blender or 3DMax.  Oblivion/Fallout3/Skyrim/Fallout4 are all the same game as far as lighting mechanics go.  Bethesda might bolt on some new do-dads and claim whatever they want, but you can use a texture and normal map from Oblivion and they will work with FO4.

 

Since you're using GIMP here's a trick you can try:

*Open your texture without loading all of the mip maps and export it as a png with one layer.  Exit GIMP.

*Open the png you just made; on the top tool bar go to Colors/Desaturate and pick Lightness from the dialogue window.

*Go to Filters/Map and normal map.  When the dialogue window comes up select Filter 9x9.  Under Options check the 'Wrap' box.  Under Alpha Channel select 'Height'.  Leave everything else alone.  Click OK.

*Now export the png as a dds with the DTX5 Compression and Generate mipmaps.

*Test it in-game.

 

IF this works for you try playing with the Scale and Minimum Z when generating the normal map.  Fucking with these values too much will give you dubious results so be sure to keep a clean and unedited png of your texture as a backup.

Right now it's too late where i live, but i wll try it tomorrow and inform you of the resutlts, thanks a lot for your help dude! i hope not to mess this up