Back again with another texture based question. I have previously discussed retexturing and normal mapping on several different threads and most of my questions were answered by helpful forumers and the CS wiki. However it seems GIMP and Skyrim handles textures/normal maps a bit different. Mostly, it seems as though my textures are still coming out flat so I have a few questions.

1) I have been altering the opacity through the slider on the top right of the window, the guide suggested levels between 85-100. These produced very flat and shiny textures, I figured that the scale must be flipped so I have been creating normal maps with around 5-10% opacity, saving them to a PNG, then applying the normal map filter. At this point I select 3x3 for a rougher texture and a scale of 8 for even more roughness. However despite my best efforts my texture is even flatter than the vanilla texture. Does changing the resolution of the texture cause a problem when attempting to create detailed normal maps? Also is applying the transparency before or after the normal map filter the way to go? And lastly in what stage does the alpha channel need to be reapplied? I thought I was doing it right before because my textures did look better, but in a side by side comparison a vanilla gold coin and my retextured, higher resolution version, the vanilla one seems to have more depth. Please if someone would be so kind to provide a step by step process for creating, saving and exporting a normal map I would be indebted.

http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/6558/screenshot29u.png
http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/2152/screenshot28b.png

I don't know what do you mean by "the slider on the top right of the window", is that from the normal map tool?

Anyway, here's my basic recipe for normals in GIMP:
Start with texture.dds in GIMP.
Go to Colors > Color to Alpha.
Click on the From: white bar, choose black (you can enter 000000 in the HTML notation)
Click OK > Ok.
Then go to Filters > Map > normalmap
I don't even mess with the 3D preview. I do (if not mentioned, leave it at default):
Filter: 3x3
Scale: -1.0000 ( plus or minus for a protruding look or a carved in look. This you may need to adjust depending how "deep" or how "protruded" you want the texture to look)
Check Wrap
Click OK.
Then go to Colors > Curves
On the Channel drop-down, select Alpha
Grab the line from the top-right. If you want your texture to not shine, lower the bar to the 2nd line from the bottom.

This should give you a basic, non-shiny, non-flat result in-game, good for things like clothing

Hope this helps you.

I was talking about the line on the channel drop down menu.

Some other questions, do you still change the filter depending on the desired material? And does having the scale in the negative values indicate protrusion or extrusion? Will this method work for things that are not clothes ( dumb question but you never know).

Thank you very much for all your assistance.

I followed your steps and it produced a very similar result, although it was a much simpler process than what I had been doing to reduce the alpha channel.

I'm going by memory here.. I think it is minus in the filter will give you protrude in-game, plus will give you a bas-relief look in game. But you can test that by going either +5 or -5 then looking in-game.

Are you just replacing the texture?

Okay thank you. If nothing else you've saved me a lot of time with that method of changing the alpha channel. I used to have to, change the Opacity of the entire image using the slider on the layers dialogue box, save it as a PNG, reopen it, then apply the normal map.

One more thing: if you are doing this with the coin, are you doing anything with Bronze_e.dds and Gray.dds ?

I was not

Ok.

One more thing, if you want the coin to shine, then you wouldn't do the curve at all.
In general, when you look at your normal_n.dds, the more transparent it looks, the less shiny the object is. The more opaque it is, the shinier it is.

There may be other tweaks you'd need to do in nifSkope to the material properties, but nifSkope is not there yet for Skyrim.

If I have time, I'd give the coin in Skyrim a shot with an entirely new texture.