What is involved in editing default images in Skyrim?

For example, there are only three colors of mages guild hoods. What if I wanted to take on of these images, do a simple "recoloring" of the image, and create several new color variants to be added back to the game?

The only image editing software I have besides MS Paint (WIndows 7 version) is Gimp V2.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

First a lot of knowledge can be gleaned from the pinned topic in this forum http://www.gamesas.com/forum/183-skyrim-mods/

Half way down the pinned ones, look at the one titled "If youve released a texture mod or plan to"


GIMP you already have ( But v2 ?, thats quite old now .. grab 2.8 if you haven't http://www.gimp.org/ )

And a couple of plugins for GIMP ..

DDS plugin https://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/

Normal Map plugin https://code.google.com/p/gimp-normalmap/

That pinned topic though ( and all the links you will find reading through it ) will be a big help

Ooh and, with saving DDS files from GIMP, you need to use the file menu and "Export" them in the correct format ( using the export dialogue drop down selections )


Texture types.

The purpose(s) for the game, the dimensions and mip-levels as well as the format and compression the texture is saved in.

The following use-cases are known (for Oblivion and Skyrim):

in a "menu"-folder: User-interface element, alpha channel = element-mask
in a "landscapelod"- or "terrain"-folder: World-space normal-map for terrain, no alpha

with a "_n"-suffix: Tangent-space normal-map, alpha channel = specularity
with a "_msn"-suffix: Model-space normal-map, no alpha
with a "_g"-, "_glow"- or "_emit"-suffix: Glow-map, alpha channel = mask
with a "_hh"-suffix: Gloss-map for hair, no alpha
with a "_hl"-suffix: Detail-map for hair, alpha channel = opacity
with a "_m"-suffix: Reflectivity-map for light-sources, no alpha
with a "_em"- or "_envmap"-suffix: Reflectivity-map for environment-maps, no alpha
with a "_e"-suffix: Environment-map (some are planar, some are cube-maps), no alpha
with a "_b"- or "_bl"-suffix: Backlight-map, no alpha
with a "_s"-suffix: Specularity-map for skins, no alpha
with a "_sk"-suffix: Tone-map for skins, no alpha
with a "_p"-suffix: Parallax-map, no alpha
with a "_d"-suffix: Diffuse-map, alpha channel = opacity
with a "_h"-suffix: Haze-map, alpha channel = unknown

All other name.dds are Color-map, alpha channel = opacity or parallax