For those people that use Photoshop, what are some of the best plugins out there (free or not) that can be useful for modding Oblivion...and why do you like them so much?

(Excluding the NVidia Plugins)

Thanks,
LHammonds

I think the only plugins I use are brushes, mostly the crack brushes from http://hawksmont.com/blog/category/graphic_design/resources/brushes/ site. I have lots of crack brushes, couldn't find some of them anymore though. Since I mostly do architecture it is great for giving wall/floor textures an old, rotten look. But I think the other brushes on the site look good as well, just don't know what to do with them for modding.

Most free filters I found were either useless or ugly.

No. 1 most used plugin by far: Bevel Boss from Eye Candy. Great for creating features in both normal and diffuse maps.

Thanks.

So far, the following additions seem to be helpful (more than just plugins):

Textures / Visual Effects Plugins
http://www.filterforge.com/filters/ ($180) (HiRes+Normal Maps)
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1152105061785#tabview=tab0 ($100)
http://www.alienskin.com/ ($600)


Brushes
http://hawksmont.com/blog/category/graphic_design/resources/brushes/
http://www.brusheezy.com/
http://myphotoshopbrushes.com
http://www.psbrushes.net/
http://www.photoshopbrushes.com/
http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/applications/psbrushes/
http://www.obsidiandawn.com/

Textures
http://www.aztextures.com/
http://www.cgtextures.com/
http://www.mayang.com/textures/index.htm
http://textures.forrest.cz/

Patterns
http://www.brusheezy.com/patterns
http://myphotoshopbrushes.com/patterns
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/02/12/the-ultimate-collection-of-free-photoshop-patterns/
http://freephotoshoppatterns.com/
http://free-photoshop-patterns.com/

xnormal- can be useful. I have baked in it once, but I only ever use it to extract a particular type of map that I use to draw the sharp highlighted edges in spec/diffuse maps, from baked normal maps.
if you can bake in your 3dapp/zb/mudbox, and use crazybump (which produce the best results) its not so useful for normal maps- though it might be wise to start using it over the nvidia normal filter if you still use that :shrug:

what phitt said- most free filters I have looked at are crap imo. I don't think I use any except those already included.

I have some custom brushes I like. a couple I made myself. Most were picked up over the years. I only regularly use about 15. Mostly scratch, grime, spill, dirt brushes. < phitt we should trade

also I have some mipmap profiles I like(sorta :S) for the nvidia dds plugin. I started experimenting with using GIMP for diffuse maps saving. Its easy to get a decent mipmap output, if you can stand using it, where as testing the many variables with the nvidia plugin gets tedious.

cs4 does texture projection, which actually looks useful. at the least it is not going to add a whole lot of extra arsing around to do a projection, and you'll almost certainly be in PS texturing anyway. It might be win.

(why does the spell checker flag texturing- it is most certainly a verb! it need to be a word )

I'm starting to think that I need to create a Photoshop page that has resources most helpful to modding Oblivion...such as textures and brushes related to metal, stone, scratches, grim, blood, book covers, etc.

It would be kinda like my Blender page but with Photoshop in mind where somebody just starting out modding Oblivion (that has Photoshop) would be able to get the necessary pieces together very quickly.

LHammonds