Armor texturing for beginners
Overview
This tutorial covers the process of getting your new texture into the game, NOT the actual texturing. Find some tutorials related to your graphics editor of choice for that.
What you will need
Let's begin
- Create a new Texture Set (find the Texture set in the tree under Miscellaneous)
- Right click --> New (does not matter where since you are creating a new set)
- Give it a name.
- Extract your texture(s) and edit them in your Graphics editing program of choice (must be in .dds format). Personally I use the F03 Archive Utility for my texture extracting purposes.
- Place your texture(s) in Data/textures/Yourname/Yourmodname
- Select the Diffuse texture (the regular one) and, if applicable, the Normal/Gloss texture (the normal map; name ends in _n), and use the Edit button to browse for your edited texture using the path mentioned in step 5. You should see a preview of the texture in the right side box of the texture set window
- Check Specular Map Data; leave Decal Data unchecked
- Click OK
- Find the Armor branch in the tree on the left, look for the name of your base outfit (a bit of a trial and error process, unfortunately; use the Model Data window to get a preview of what it is you're editing – more about that in Steps 12 and 13)
- Right-click on it and choose Edit; a window should pop up containing information pertaining to it.
- Change the ID to something of your choice (can be anything, but starting with 0 will place it at the beginning of the list) Click OK.
- This step depends on whether you are editing just the male or female textures, or both. Click on the first Edit button under either Male Biped Model or Female Biped Model. You should see a window titled Model Data, with a 3D preview and related elements. This is where you attach your new texture.
- Double-click on Upper Body and choose the texture set you've created earlier from the list. Depending on the outfit, you might have to repeat the process for Arms01, Arms, pipboyon and pipboyoff. Click OK, and OK again
- Save as .esp
- At this point you can use the console to gift yourself the item in game; otherwise you will need to arrange placement for it in the world. That is covered below:
- Find Container under World Objects in the tree list
- Choose one sort, for example FootLocker01Library and double-click on it to open
- Change the ID to something of your choice, and empty the Item List by right clicking on each line and choosing delete
- Once the Item List is empty, right-click and choose new; if you've chosen an ID starting with 0 in step 11, your outfit will most likely be added automatically. Otherwise you'll have to choose it from the Object dropdown, under the list of items. You can change the number in the Count box if you want it to contain more than one outfit. Now you'll need to place it somewhere in the world to use; for this tutorial, I've chosen Doc Mitchell's backyard in Goodsprings.
- In the Cell View window, change the Worldspace dropdown menu to WastelandNV
- Scroll down until you see Goodsprings and click on it
- Find SCOLgsDocHouse02 and double-click on it; wait for it to load and you should get a 3D view of Doc Mitchell's house, hovering from above. In the camera window you use the mouse wheel to scroll in and out, or hold it down and move the mouse to pan the camera around. You can also hold down Shift to get it to rotate.
- Zoom in to the spot where you want to place your container; simply drag it from the Container list and release the mouse for it to appear. It will probably be large and floating above ground; double-click it in the Camera window and a Reference window should appear. Here you can scale it down, rotate it, etc. Use the F key to drop it to the ground
- Click OK once you are done with it and hit Save
- You are done! Enable the mod in the launcher and if all went OK, your container should be where you placed it, ready for use.
As a note, if after trying it out in game you find that your texture needs more work, simply editing the .dds should be sufficient without making any other changes to the mod file.
