I used to know how to create icons but it seems I am doing something wrong now. I read the tutorials on the wiki, thoroughly yet when I want to create an icon I get that mipmap image as a result (the pink-purple version), even though I chose not to generate mipmaps.

I'm using photoshop with the dds plug in yet whenever I try to create an icon I get this issue.

Would someone mind making an icon out of http://www.ninci.com/Images/WebSite/BlackPearlIcon.jpg, or better yet, telling me what I am doing wrong. I created the alpha, flattened the image, saved with the DX3 compression, selecting no mipmaps yet this happens.

That pink/purple square is actually due to a missing texture, not mipmaps.You need to save icons to the Texture/Menus/Icons/ directory.

Don't icons require Mipmaps in order to work with multiple screen resolutions? I thought that was done instead of keeping separate copies in the Menus,Menus80,Menus50 folders like the maps, because they get used i multiple contexts at different sizes. Though my recollection is of seeing random pixel patterns instead of a pink square when that's the issue, so you may have more than one thing to fix.

I don't remember if the capital M for menus has the same effect here, either, but for the items that do have to have three instances in those folders, the path specified in the CS needs that capital M so that it knows which piece to substitute, even though the file system isn't case-sensitive.

http://www.4shared.com/file/IYGoVjsw/BlackPearl.html -- A couple things with the image you had - 1 it was 100x100 and icons need to be a power of 2 on each side (normally 64x64) so I adjusted that - then as you mentioned it needs to be saved with no Mip Maps and DXT3 or DXT5 to save the alpha channel for the transparent background. (Alpha white for the icon portion and black for the background so it will be transparent in the menu)

Also It must be placed i a sub folder of Textures\Menus\icons\ as already mentioned i order for the game to find it !

@Ghastley -- Actually saving it with MipMaps will cause distortions in the menu (this is what happened with the KOTN addon and why the CS complains about icons having Mip Maps when opening the KOTN.esp !) since Mip maps are drops in powers of 2 where the menus use 80% and 50% sizes so need to be made by placing the texture in the lower left corner of a full size image after resizing to 80% for menus80 and 50% for menu50 folders (the game will resize automatically from the fullsize image if no menu80 or menu50 version exists so most mods do not bother with them !!

The 100x100 was actually the image I was working with. I changed it to 64x64 when I created the icon. I also did put it in the right folder. I did everything that needs to be done yet I got the purple/rose result (I believe it's called normal map).

Anyway thanks for creating the icon. I'd still appreciate if someone could tell me where I might have gone wrong to generate a normal map instead of the icon.

Most likely 'convert to tangent space normal map' is check in the 'normal map settings' tab.

That is most likely the cause (I just tested and having that box checked does make it save as a normal map !!)