FastestDogInTheDistrict Posted January 21, 2014 Posted January 21, 2014 I am tinkering with the facegen head meshes normally stored in Skyrim's .tri files, and I would like to temporarily add a texture to the object to make it easier to see what I'm doing - at the moment it's all a uniform grey, and I'm having to resort to repeated trial and error. No matter what though, I cannot seem to change the colour or add any texture material to the mesh (*bear in mind - I do NOT want to export the mesh with an added texture. This is ONLY to try and visually ease editing in 3dsMax). If I change the colour by clicking on the little coloured square ("Object Color"), the head mesh stays grey. If I add a material, the head mesh stays grey. If I make a new object, say a sphere or cylinder, *THAT* object can change colour, but the head mesh just stays grey, grey, grey. ALL the online tutorials I have found lead back to those two methods, which are not working. There is something I am missing but I do not know what. Please help?
Vioxsis Posted January 22, 2014 Posted January 22, 2014 What are you using to import the head.tri in to max? And i'm not sure if the meshes in the tri's have proper UVs. But what you could try is, import the head.nif in too the scene move it of to the side and add a morph modifier to it and link it to the tri mesh. That way you can add textures to the nif head and see what it would look like and the .tri head will remain intact.
FastestDogInTheDistrict Posted January 22, 2014 Author Posted January 22, 2014 I have recently learned how to use Anton's Animation Tool N2 for .tri files. This is allowing me to unpack them and work with all the .obj's and .nif's it contains in 3dsMax. The .tri is only used as something which is unpacked at the beginning and re-packed at the end. The .tri itself is not imported to Max - I'm not sure how I would go about morphs and .tri linking (I'm shaky on the first and clueless on the second). I can now get a head mesh to display a different colour in 3dsMax by removing an invisible and unlisted Material property (Utilities > More... > UVW Remove > Materials). I have not checked if doing this breaks anything in-game yet. I also discovered that I cannot seem to add a texture to a *NEW* object in the scene - eg: a sphere. Colour change yes, texture from a .bmp or .dds no. I do not know why. Clicking the "Material Editor" button next to the three teapot icons brings up a "Slate Material Editor" which is different in appearance to all the tutorials I've seen. I go to "Modes > Compact" to make it the same. *EDIT: ... and just discovered that this same problem occurs even in a completely new scene with a new mesh. I click on a "sphere" in the Materials editor, select a texture, and the little panel with the sphere goes jet black & unresponsive. I am definitely doing something very, very wrong. Max version is 2012 if that helps. *EDIT: Okay - different tutorials (*lesson learned: avoid older Max tutorials like the plague), simpler method, fiddled with some settings and I can NOW get a texture to display. Problem is, it displays upside down and cannot be rotated.. un-ticked "flip UVs" during import (which I normally have ticked as per the Nightasy tutorial import settings) and that problem is fixed. Now to check if doing this messes anything up in-game (and how to remove the texture)... *EDIT: nope, all good. And I don't even need to remove the material. Maybe this is what Bethesda did (or similar). Many thanks for your help Vioxsis - this had me really stumped. Your mention of UVs was a clincher! *SUCCESS*!
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