[Emmie Cate]

The photos were taken in the Santa Cruz mountains. I grew up in the Santa Clara Valley, and my family spent 1-2 weeks in the redwoods each year. But then I moved to the wasteland of Texas. We took a 3 week vacation in the Bay Area last year, and I tried to get some decent pics of redwoods. Not an easy thing to do with a low-end digital camera. This summer we get to go back again, and I hope to have a better camera. I really want to get some nice pics of banana slugs.

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http://rapidshare.com/files/86318974/PossibleRedwoods.7z Some I would need to tint.

We're still at least a week away from being able to get the two tiling programs though, so it just PSP for now...

Sorry it took so long but being dyslexic I couldn't understand what I was saying in my own tutorial. So here one. Instead of a brush and eye drop You can use a clone stamp looks like a rubber stamp.

http://www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/Creating-seamless-texture/31388

Let me know if this is useful.

[Sebrina Johnstone]

Another one on normals and layers

http://www.cgtextures.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=149

[Rik Douglas]

Do you mind if we also make this a Q&A thread along with links? If so, I'll erase this post.

I've been having troubles texturing a sword for someone else. It's kind of a dragon head handle/guard with a blade sticking out the mouth Anyway, he wants it to look like "Flesh turned into Metal", as if the soul were bound to the sword. I've tried several times to get this effect, but pretty much all turns out looking rubbish. Any thoughts/tips?

http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm on general art studies. Great info for everyone, even someone needing a brush-up.

http://www.pioroberson.com/extras.php - I really liked his normal map tricks writeup. Check his gallery too!

[Zualett]

Hello,
1. I have a few questions... Is there a 'rule of thumb' that says where different layers go, such as highth map, color and so on, in relation to how Oblivion renders texture? (and if they should go in a layer of the dds or of the normal)

2. What types of layers will be used/disregarted/made unplayable by the Gambyro engine?

3. When you have your image looking the way you want, how ever many layers and masks there are below it, How do you wrap it up so to speak? Is it left as it is and saved as your .dds or is it merged down, flattened or some such process? I do realise that some merging and flattening is done to acheive the desired look, but this quest is about when you have acheived it and you have multiple layers in Gimp and your ready to save to .dds.

Thanks,
Khugan

[Kevin S]

As far as .dds and map placements go, we have:

-On your average model:
Color Map (alpha:Transparency) + Normal Map (alpha:Specular) -Transparency map is optional, only if the mesh has an AlphaProperty

-or-
Color Map (alpha:Transparency) + Normal Map (alpha:Specular) + Glow Map (greyscale/single channel .dds)

-if parallax is enabled for the model:
Color Map (alpha:parallax) + Normal Map (alpha:specular)

-Hair-
Color Map (alpha:Transparency) + Layer Map (alpha:color/layer map mask) + Normal Map (alpha:Specular) + Mystery Map (maybe)


.dds are flattened images, Typically, we'd want to work in a native/uncompressed format, with all our fancy layers, and copy a merged version of this to another file to export out as a .dds.

[daniel royle]

As far as .dds and map placements go, we have:

-On your average model:
Color Map (alpha:Transparency) + Normal Map (alpha:Specular) -Transparency map is optional, only if the mesh has an AlphaProperty

-or-
Color Map (alpha:Transparency) + Normal Map (alpha:Specular) + Glow Map (greyscale/single channel .dds)

-if parallax is enabled for the model:
Color Map (alpha:parallax) + Normal Map (alpha:specular)

-Hair-
Color Map (alpha:Transparency) + Layer Map (alpha:color/layer map mask) + Normal Map (alpha:Specular) + Mystery Map (maybe)
.dds are flattened images, Typically, we'd want to work in a native/uncompressed format, with all our fancy layers, and copy a merged version of this to another file to export out as a .dds.

What is a mystery map? bliviongate:

[Cayal]

What is a mystery map? bliviongate:

No clue, honestly Take a look at the .dds files for hairstyles sometime, the *_hh.dds are the ones in question. I think they may have been left over from a previous version of Bethesda's hair shader; I don't see any references to it in the current shaders, and the game behaves just fine without that file present. I'd wager it was some variant on a specular map, or luminance or something extravagant...

[Marcin Tomkow]

Awesome thread, Skydye - I gleaned a lot from it! Subscribed.

A small tip for Photoshoppers from my side: I recently discovered that you can select all the opaque (or partially opaque) pixels on a layer by holding CTRL and left-clicking on the layer thumbnail in the layer list. It's such a useful little technique that I no longer know how I got by without it. Needless to say, it's great for creating icon textures and splash screens - especially since the custom splash screen .PSD included with Oblivion (load_Troll.psd) includes layers that masks for the blank areas on the splash screens, for text and such.

[cassy]

Awesome thread, Skydye - I gleaned a lot from it! Subscribed.

A small tip for Photoshoppers from my side: I recently discovered that you can select all the opaque (or partially opaque) pixels on a layer by holding CTRL and left-clicking on the layer thumbnail in the layer list. It's such a useful little technique that I no longer know how I got by without it. Needless to say, it's great for creating icon textures and splash screens - especially since the custom splash screen .PSD included with Oblivion (load_Troll.psd) includes layers that masks for the blank areas on the splash screens, for text and such.

Yeah. Or you right click on the layer thumbnail and choose something like "select transparency" or "select pixels". I don't know the exact name of the entry in the english version but it should be the third one. In german it's "Pixel ausw?hlen" (CS3). Extremely useful function.

[Motionsharp]

Another one on normals and layers

http://www.cgtextures.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=149

Sorry it's suppose to be a q.a. but I post links to keep the thread alive.
I'm guess you have your flesh. Try a background layer. Rough pastels as a filter. Easer or mask parts of your background to different opacity. Then use blend if. http://www.cgtextures.com/content.php?action=tutorial&name=blendif

Thanks AstionM and bomret always great to see more time savers.

[Alex [AK]]

I have a question, I hope can be anwsered. What could be the problem: when I try to save a dds file I get the message: "Too many channels to export (5)" ? I only saw that message a long time ago, but now it's pops up again...

[clelia vega]

I have a question, I hope can be anwsered. What could be the problem: when I try to save a dds file I get the message: "Too many channels to export (5)" ? I only saw that message a long time ago, but now it's pops up again...

You can only save rgb and an alpha mask. Take a look and see if your not trying to sneak in an extra alpha channel on it.

[Petr Jordy Zugar]

Hm, it's for an icon. Here's what the channel tab looks like: http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u15/StarX_GFX/channels.jpg. It's set up exactly the same as vanilla icons, so I'm a bit confused about it.

EDIT: Found the solution! Seems I had to flatten the layers (even though I had only one!) so it became the background layer again.

[Richard Dixon]

Hm, it's for an icon. Here's what the channel tab looks like: http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u15/StarX_GFX/channels.jpg. It's set up exactly the same as vanilla icons, so I'm a bit confused about it.

EDIT: Found the solution! Seems I had to flatten the layers (even though I had only one!) so it became the background layer again.

If your saving as a TGA don't forget to save as 32 bit or you'll lose your alpha.

[LittleMiss]

Skydye: My pleasure. I must say, it's a pleasant surprise to see you around on the boards. I know your name from your excellent sky texture replacer for Morrowind, but I've never seen you active in any community before. *hat tip*

StarX: I believe I had that problem once. I think the cause was that I had no "background" layer. .DDS files must have a background layer, even if it isn't visible, since it stores some vital information in it. I think you fixed your problem by flattening the image because layers automatically flatten to a new background layer.

A short, unimportant question... why exactly does the "Explicit Alpha" (DXT3) DDS format even exist when "Interpolated Alpha" (DXT5) is far more detailed and weighs in at exactly the same amount of KBs? I'm convinced that I must be missing something.

Also, and on that note, I'm looking for ways to cut down on mod size by chopping texture size, without sacrificing quality. Does anyone have any tips along these lines? A good example is saving loading screens as DXT1 (No alpha) as opposed to the DXT5 format as used by Bethesda, since the alpha information in splash screens is not used.

I've thought, for example, that the game might default to an all-white alpha channel if a texture does not have alpha information, making that channel on a diffuse texture redundant. I have yet to test this in-game, though, but aside from my wishful thinking, Murphy's Law dictates that it will probably bugger the texture up in some weird, NetImmersy fashion.

For this post's contribution, a step-by-step guide to creating Bethesda-identical icons:

• Open the model in NifScope and take a screenshot at your desired angle
  
• Paste into Photoshop and crop to a square image
  
• Select the black background of the image with a Magic Wand set to 0 tolerance, invert the selection and copy to clipboard
  
• Paste into 64x64 .PSD with a background colour identical to that of Bethesda's icons and resize to fit
  
• Image->Adjustments->Brightness and Contrast (+10 Brightness, +40 Contrast)
  
• Select opaque pixels by CTRL-right-clicking the layer thumbnail (as above)
  
• Select->Expand (1 pixel) and Select->Feather (1 pixel)
  
• Create alpha channel and fill selection with white.
  
• Save to DXT5 format, no mip maps.

Short, sodlike tutorial, I know... but I've been creating so many icons that the procedure's been engrained in my mind and I needed some catharsis. Twenty icons and counting. Phew!

[Charlotte Henderson]

Hm, I created a whole bunch of new icons today and saved in DTX3 format. And they look pretty good. I'm not sure if saving to DTX5 would give a very significant better result (on the tiny icons), but I'll use DTX5 for my new icons in the future.

[Natasha Callaghan]

My view on size is this. I've looked at all the oblivion textures. None but a few are bigger then 512. Instead of saying I'm wrong, I'm lying, but...but, but, just check it for yourself. A couple of sky's are 1024 large textures and a copy of normals with specularly are that size. I'm seeing sizes of 2048 as the average size in packs everywhere and talk of above. I say do your work, You can make a very good sharp game texture at game size without stopping the game coming to a complete stop just to look at a building.

[Natalie J Webster]

Hm, I created a whole bunch of new icons today and saved in DTX3 format. And they look pretty good. I'm not sure if saving to DTX5 would give a very significant better result (on the tiny icons), but I'll use DTX5 for my new icons in the future.

I found another thread with people musing and linking on the same topic, over at http://www.cgchat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13304.
I've tended to not use DXT3, because it seems half the time, the nVidia filter totally DE-STROYS the exported file, kind of random. I actually made 3 DXT3 icons last night without problem though *shrug*

My view on size is this. I've looked at all the oblivion textures. None but a few are bigger then 512. Instead of saying I'm wrong, I'm lying, but...but, but, just check it for yourself. A couple of sky's are 1024 large textures and a copy of normals with specularly are that size. I'm seeing sizes of 2048 as the average size in packs everywhere and talk of above. I say do your work, You can make a very good sharp game texture at game size without stopping the game coming to a complete stop just to look at a building.

It's a tough call, that's for sure As modders, we don't have the restrictions that a game company would, we don't have to try to fit everything on a set of discs, but we don't want to give peoples' video cards hemorrhages either, just nice little download packages. But at the same time, a lot of people these days really want something high-res or high-quality, especially the screenshot group Recently, I've quieted my polycount/imagesize nazi, but I've been second-guessing that too.. O_o


Anway, thanks for the tip on Blend-if, skydye, I forgot all about that, and never realized some of those sliders could be split like that! (Maybe that's why I didn't get my Photoshop cert, hah) Could just be part of the effect I'm looking for. And speaking of hidden features and whatnot, CTRL-ALT-Tilde (~, or above the tab key, console key to everyone else) makes a soft selection of everything 50% luminance and up. It does consider any visible layer, not just the current one, and is similar to ctrl-clicking on a color channel. I find this one useful for setting up soft glows, I'll start a new layer set to soft light or overlay, ctrl-alt-tilde, and fill with a light color, deselect and blur.


Also, does anyone know of an app that will edit filters? I keep a sizable amount around, and a while back I went to clean up the junky ones I never use, and categorize many of them to fall into similar menus on the filter drop-down list. It's lame to have a looong menu, when half of the entries only have one filter in them. I was able to hex-edit most of them to my liking, but was wondering if anyone knows of an easier way?

(they're all free filters, i'd be willing to share if anyone wants my current set)

[Eliza Potter]

I found another thread with people musing and linking on the same topic, over at http://www.cgchat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13304.
I've tended to not use DXT3, because it seems half the time, the nVidia filter totally DE-STROYS the exported file, kind of random. I actually made 3 DXT3 icons last night without problem though *shrug*
It's a tough call, that's for sure As modders, we don't have the restrictions that a game company would, we don't have to try to fit everything on a set of discs, but we don't want to give peoples' video cards hemorrhages either, just nice little download packages. But at the same time, a lot of people these days really want something high-res or high-quality, especially the screenshot group Recently, I've quieted my polycount/imagesize nazi, but I've been second-guessing that too.. O_o
Anway, thanks for the tip on Blend-if, skydye, I forgot all about that, and never realized some of those sliders could be split like that! (Maybe that's why I didn't get my Photoshop cert, hah) Could just be part of the effect I'm looking for. And speaking of hidden features and whatnot, CTRL-ALT-Tilde (~, or above the tab key, console key to everyone else) makes a soft selection of everything 50% luminance and up. It does consider any visible layer, not just the current one, and is similar to ctrl-clicking on a color channel. I find this one useful for setting up soft glows, I'll start a new layer set to soft light or overlay, ctrl-alt-tilde, and fill with a light color, deselect and blur.
Also, does anyone know of an app that will edit filters? I keep a sizable amount around, and a while back I went to clean up the junky ones I never use, and categorize many of them to fall into similar menus on the filter drop-down list. It's lame to have a looong menu, when half of the entries only have one filter in them. I was able to hex-edit most of them to my liking, but was wondering if anyone knows of an easier way?

(they're all free filters, i'd be willing to share if anyone wants my current set)

That's a good idea putting filters together. Edit then go down and people will see a opacity filter....very handy for things that don't have layers.

[Amber Ably]

A new video has been added to blend if tutorial.
http://www.cgtextures.com/content.php?action=tutorial&name=blendif
Click the link for the video, It a swf so here's a free player to watch it. You'll see swf more and more for tutorial videos
http://www.globfx.com/downloads/swfplayer/

[Kaylee Campbell]

For this post's contribution, a step-by-step guide to creating Bethesda-identical icons:

• Open the model in NifScope and take a screenshot at your desired angle
  
• Paste into Photoshop and crop to a square image
  
• Select the black background of the image with a Magic Wand set to 0 tolerance, invert the selection and copy to clipboard
  
• Paste into 64x64 .PSD with a background colour identical to that of Bethesda's icons and resize to fit
  
• Image->Adjustments->Brightness and Contrast (+10 Brightness, +40 Contrast)
  
• Select opaque pixels by CTRL-right-clicking the layer thumbnail (as above)
  
• Select->Expand (1 pixel) and Select->Feather (1 pixel)
  
• Create alpha channel and fill selection with white.
  
• Save to DXT5 format, no mip maps.

Short, sodlike tutorial, I know... but I've been creating so many icons that the procedure's been engrained in my mind and I needed some catharsis. Twenty icons and counting. Phew!

There is also another way that works as well that you may want to try :

1. Take a screenshot of the item - (Nifskope render window with a black background works well - or white background for very dark models )
2. open a new photoshop file with a transparent background
3. Paste the screenie in
4. Use the Rectangular Marquee tool while holding down shift to select a square area that the model fits into
5. do an image crop
6. now do a select - color range - left click on the black background to sample the color and set fuzziness to 0 so that the model is black and the background is white
7. click OK and the entire background will be selected - hit delete key (this will leave just the model on screen
8. do an image - image size and set to 64x64 pixels
9. save as DXT1 1 bit alpha (this is needed for the transparency) - NO MIP MAPS
10. Done - the image background will show black when viewed but in game will render transparent so will match any color UI the end user is using !!

Entire process takes less than a minute !!
(I prefer this method rather than matching your UI color as other users may be using replacers !!)

[Victoria Bartel]

Thanks JDFan

here are some cool ones from Orgone at another forum. The magic wand is gold I've never heard that from anyone.

"hm, off the top of my head heres a few tricks i use often:

-auto aligning layers from one document to another:
hold shift while dragging layer into the other document and they will align perfectly.

- Alt key duplication (drag copy) without creating mutilple new layers:
hold cntrl key down and left click on layer to make selection of the item you wish to alt key duplicate (drag copy) - while dragging within the selection and you will duplicate the item within the same layer as original. very handy for creating things like bolts, etc, without the annoying step of having to merge all the new layers afterwards.

-more precise magic wand selections:
right click with the magic wand and select 'color range' - using the eye dropper to select the areas of my image i wish to edit. i use this a lot for selecting cavity masks i export from zbrush"

Orgone

[lolly13]

Not sure if this has been mentioned already, but in Photoshop, just underneath your foreground/background colours there is a button to edit in quick mask mode. I find this extremely useful for manipulating selections.

I'll give an example:

1. Create a new document with a blank background.
2. Make a selection, such as a rectangular marquee or lasso tool.
3. Click on edit quick-mask button. (I recommend double-clicking on it and changing the colour to something that will stand out from your texture and changing from masked areas to selected)
4. Manipulate your selection. You could use a gaussian blur, then when you fill it with colour it will fade evenly at the edges.
5. Make sure to move back to standard edit mode otherwise you wont be able to edit your image.

A shortcut I find useful is Ctrl+H. I hides the moving lines of your selection.

I have a question, but it may be a little specific for this thread.

I am creating a texture for a model I made for StarX's vampire project. I would like to capture the feel of the vanilla dwarven textures, but I am having trouble capturing the range of colours and the grainy look they have.

So, I was wondering if anyone has any tips for how I could acheive this. Any help would be appreciated.

[James Baldwin]

Not sure if this has been mentioned already, but in Photoshop, just underneath your foreground/background colours there is a button to edit in quick mask mode. I find this extremely useful for manipulating selections.

I'll give an example:

1. Create a new document with a blank background.
2. Make a selection, such as a rectangular marquee or lasso tool.
3. Click on edit quick-mask button. (I recommend double-clicking on it and changing the colour to something that will stand out from your texture and changing from masked areas to selected)
4. Manipulate your selection. You could use a gaussian blur, then when you fill it with colour it will fade evenly at the edges.
5. Make sure to move back to standard edit mode otherwise you wont be able to edit your image.

A shortcut I find useful is Ctrl+H. I hides the moving lines of your selection.

I have a question, but it may be a little specific for this thread.

I am creating a texture for a model I made for StarX's vampire project. I would like to capture the feel of the vanilla dwarven textures, but I am having trouble capturing the range of colours and the grainy look they have.

So, I was wondering if anyone has any tips for how I could acheive this. Any help would be appreciated.

Nick_op thanks for the tip. Can you post a couple of screens I'm not sure I follow this. I'm dyslexic so pictures help.
For your project open two textures. One the one your working on. The other the original with the nice colors. Use your eyedrop to supple the color you want from one two the other. color range can also help you. I'd do it in layers to you can adjust. Can you post a picture of the dwarven as I don't have oblivion install right now. Then we'll see about gradients and blurs and grunges

[Nicola]

OK something New I just found out (though many may be doing this already !)

When making a normal map - get Crazy Bump Beta (very easy to use ) - before starting load your model in Nifskope - select the Nitristrip of the model you are making the normal map for and triangulate (make it a NiTrishape) - now go to File - Export .obj and export the model (convert the NiTrishape back to a Nitristrip)

Now load Crazy Bump Beta - In the preview window at the bottom left select Custom Mesh ( right click where it lists either Cuboid, cylinder or custom mesh) Now point it to your .obj of the model you just exported from Nifskope. Now under the right side where it says options turn on the options you want to see rendered. Your preview window will now show your model as the mesh while making the normal map including the texture etc. if you enabled those options. So now you can see what the final result of changes to your maps will look like on the actual model.

Can you post a picture of the dwarven as I don't have oblivion install right now. Then we'll see about gradients and blurs and grunges

http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/6456/cuirassss4.jpg to kill 2 birds so to speak