how to texture

[dracotom]

Hello, i would like to know how to REtexture stuffs in Oblivion.

Some pepole do great job with existing textures in improving them.

How to improve an existing texture DDS file by make the file texture much bigger much clear and detailled??

Thanks for your answers.

[movomo]

There is no easy way to make much bigger and clear and 'same' texture from an existing small one.

The easiest way is, simply increase resoultion and apply various filters, and do some tricks so that the textures look more detailed.

The best way is, create them again from scratch. This is an extremely time spending process and you can't get the same texture with this.

[dracotom]

Thanks movomo, i'll try to improve the texture by increase the size and apply some stuffs.

I'll see the result

[dracotom]

I have an other question.

if i modify the texture .DDS

I'm sure i need to do the same with the _N.DDS no?

How this texture is used for? How i need to modify this one?

Thanks.

[movomo]

The suffix _n means the normal map. This means, It handles the 'bump' of the surface. (Imagine an orange peel, we need a lot of polygons to express surface of an orange peel but with a normal map, all we need is just a simple sphere.)

So _n.dds is NOT important in this case. If you make the texture from scratch again then you must rebuild normal map too, but since you won't, probably you don't need to modify normal map. I'm not sure if smaller normal map will work or not but just give it a try and if it doesn't work then increase its size too. ( and don't forget to save _n.dds as DXT5. they're usually need to be DXT5.It depends on the alpha channel of the image. If the alpha channel has grey colors you must save it as DXT5.)

[dracotom]

Thanks for your info, i understand now

it's always much easy when you know how it's work

So i tried to make the texture bigger with some texture cleaning and a bit recoloring.

Well the result is not what i espected, i pass the texture at 2048*2048 but no change or really not much. Maybe the Oblivion engine not support this texture resolution, dunno.

i looked a bit with others textures made by some and they mostly work the n_.dds for make the bump mapping much visible.

I'll try to work this way too for a try

Thanks again movomo!

[Guest flingingfeces]

Also make sure you're texture settings in Oblivion are set to large and remember the higher your resolution the better it will look ingame. My display settings are set to 19820x1080. You can use 2048x2048 the only downside is that higher res character textures clothing or skin can cause dramatic fps problems depending on how much ram you have. Try using a sharpen filter in gimp or something and lower the resolution on the texture just a notch. You'll be surprised.

[dracotom]

I'll try this way,

Thanks flingingfeces!

[adrenaline]

Hey Dracotom,

I am learning how to texture as well.

Here is a video about how to paint cloth wrinkles,

I guess you might also need this.

 

[thatTESguy]

My basic workflow (i.e for the Diablo mod):

 

1. Get original textures

2. Size to approx 4x the resolution (so 4096x4096 for a 1024x1024 original. You can always reduce it later) with Perfect Resize ( http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/perfect-resize/ ) or a similar free alternative.

 

I do always prefer to work in a higher resolution (so 4k if your system can handle it) and downsize it later.

 

3. Duplicate the layer a number of times and use the following filters (most commonly)

Cutout

Ink Outlines

Reticulation

Underpainting (w/ a custom texture)

 

4. Get additional stock images (usually by searching "(something) texture" in google) and putting those in new layers

 

5. Apply various layer effects to "make it look nice". Common ones include Hard/Soft lighting, overlay, screen, and the hue/saturation/luminosity tools.

 

6. Painting out areas that I don't want to touch with a clipping mask.

 

7. Save with satisfied.

[thatTESguy]

For normal maps, go read up on nDo2 ( http://quixel.se/ ) and how it will rock your world. Seriously though it's cut my workflow from hours to minutes and also improved the results by several fold.

 

You don't *have* to rebuild the normal map, but if you've spent much work on improving your textures, might as well. It makes stuff really pop.

[thatTESguy]

Also this guy's tutorial: entire workflow for creating the normals, occlusion, specular, and diffuse maps from a high-poly object. Probably more involved than what most modders on here will use, but still useful.