All I did was retex the fur and changed an eyeball. It's unfinished as I still need to do the nose, teeth/gums & paws. But it could still pass for a finished version.

I did put the files in textures/actors/bear. I don't have _m or any other files included. Just bear and bear_n.

Well the_m file of the bear is just a 64x64 complete white texture. Well best would be you upload them or make a Screenshot of your Photoshop screen with the bear and the bear_n. All we can do this way is guessing.

Good info ! -- but a couple of further clarifications :

Difference between DXT5 and DXT3 is 5 is explicit alpha so each pixel is saved just as it is in the image where DXT3 is interpolated so each pixel is averaged based on the pixel and the 3 surrounding pixels so DXT3 makes for more smooth transitions between normal values and are better for organic type textures that do not have abrupt changes in the height info where DXT5 is better for textures that have sharp height changes between pixels (ie. engravings or glyphs in a model that need sharp edges) but due to this DXT5 tends to be more prone to the shimmering texture effect (because a black and a white pixel can be right next to each other so movement of the light will cause the screen flickering when the screen updates -- thus DXT5 is more prone to compression artifacting problems so DXT3 is useful in many cases.

Also for saving uncompressed vs compressed -- the DXT compression alogorithm is a 4x compression (so filesize uncompressed is four times larger than the same size image compressed) so a 1024x1024 texture saved compressed will result in the same size file as a 512x512 texture saved uncompressed (1024x1024 is 4x the pixel count as 512x512 also which is why many times you will see people drop the texture size by one factor and save uncompressed instead of using compression (the resulting file will use the same amount of memory since it decreases the pixel count by a factor of 4 while increasing the filesize by a factor of 4 saving uncompressed) -- and as Phitt mentioned will remove the chance of compression artifacts effecting the result so many times you can get better results for images that will be seen in extreme closeups (ie. skin textures on faces)

Uhmm... JDFan, I think you're getting DXT3 and DXT5 backwards. DXT3 has the sharp tiers in its explicit alpha while DXT5 has the interpolated.

problem might be youre diffuse map - are you trying to create a white bear ?
if so, try to make youre diffuse map darker - for my snow texture i actually used grey with ~70% brigthness to make it look white ingame.


What i found about the alpha channel so far:

-Alpha channel of the diffuse texture is either used for a specular or alpha map.
-Alpha channel of the normal texture is used as glossiness-map on some textures, on most objects it seems to be a specular-map and
sometimes it is used as "i have no idea what this is supposed to do"-map for example stonewall01_n.dds


Also if you want to reduce the intensity of a normal map i wouldnt mess around with single channels - create a new layer on top - fill it with 128,128,255 - and use opacity to blend it over the original normal map.

Got an example of the alpha used as the specular? It's never been used as that before in Oblivion or either of the Fallouts.

yes, if you look at some of the snow textures - for example snow01.dds or tundramosstest01.dds - atleast it looks like a spec map to me

I've even used the Vanilla's Normal Map and it's still shiny. The problem maybe lies with my Texture Map? It truly looks no different than any other textures I've seen.

Here is my Texture WIP. As you can see, both have different Alpha's and end up shiny in the game.

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3126/capturewiz040x.jpg

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/492/capturewiz039.jpg

yes, youre diffuse texture (color) is definitly to bright i think - as a test add a new layer with black 20% on top and see if that solves the problem

Never use a complete white texture, even if it has to be white ingame. It will shine like on your Picture. As written use a greyish color for a white ingame color.

Oops -- your right ! -- it's been awhile and I got it backwards

White shouldn't be a problem. Textures show up in-game just as they were created. Same as I've done in the past. Even other's mods which include White Skeever's and White Wolves seem to have no problem. I've compared my textures and normals with theirs, and they all share the same grey-scale and colors.

I've tested and I've darkened my texture to a dark-grey to black, and it was still shiny. This is so aggravating and I feel like I'm pestering others to help me figure this out.

Hmm that sounds a bit weird...as i said, upload the textures so other can have a look at it. We might find the error faster this way.

skyrim normal maps are different from oblivion normal maps.

oblivion normal maps were mostly bluish -- they are "tangent space normals"

skyrim normal maps have all the colors of the rainbow -- they are "object space normals".

If you generate the wrong kind, they will look wrong, in the game.

I have heard people suggest that this change was introduced to get rid of neck seams.

I have also heard people suggest that object space normals do not animate (deform) properly, but I think that really means that it takes some extra code in the rendering engine (probably in the shaders) for them to animate properly even though animation mostly works without that extra code.

Anyways, skyrim uses object space normals, and if your normal map is mostly bluish, it's the wrong kind of normal map for skyrim (unless maybe your object can only be seen from "above"?).

bearpolar.dds ---- http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2BL4N7MA



r.d.m., that is interesting information. Thanks. I'll look into what you've said.

From what i have seen....you texture map is named bearpolar.dds , your normal map has to be named bearpolar_n.dds then. Have you done this?

No, that is the old way. Since FO3 the normals are specifically specified within each mesh so naming conventions are irrelevant.

That's what I was thinking as well when I checked out the dds map. For my skyrim mods I use the object space normal maps that I base off the original maps in photoshop. As far as I know there is no other way to create these maps from scratch than to bake them directly in blender max or zbrush. Which will be really difficult for a lot of modders, I downloaded a free trial of zbrush yesterday to have a look at it. I guess it'll take some time to adapt to the software but I think it's doable. However I need to practice a lot more before I can come up with my own custom normal maps.

As far as I know it's also impossible to create these maps without 3d software meaning they can't just be created off 2d textures.

I thought about a way to work around it, however I haven't tested it though. I thought about creating a heighmap which I use as a base to bake textures in 3d max. In 3d max you create a square plane object and set the segments to let's say 1000 or higher [depending how much you are willing to spend on render time] on each side. Then add the displacement modifier and use the heightmap as the displacement map. This will basically create a "3d version" of your texture which you can use to bake the normal map.

It's just a theory still so I have no idea if this will actually work but it's worth trying to work around this issue....

Bears seem to use the same one Normal map; as directly ripped from the Texture BFA's.

But, it doesn't hurt to try.

{edit} no luck. Still the same.

just tested baking the tangent space normals with the heighmap though 3d max and it works...though the quality is not something to be very excited about.

btw I just checked your screenshot of the alpha maps on the previous page and they seem somewhat overlit. They should be allmost black/greyish try it and you'll probably see the difference!

Anyone know where to find the different bear types? In my extracted bsa folder I can only find the regular bear. Baffles me a bit. Something missing in my extracted meshes folder? I thought that maybe you could assign different textures for the same mesh in the CK or something like that, but other animals with the same mesh and different textures have individual nifs as well (like ice wolf, regular wolf or fox and arctic fox).

I have no idea what's wrong with the OP's retexture, I retextured the bear (both diffuse map and normal map) and everything was ok.



Only very few normal maps are object space normal maps in Skyrim. So far I only saw it used for body textures of the default races, but not anywhere else (though there may be some more). But 99% of normal maps are still regular tangent space normal maps so no problem there - and you don't have to use object space normal maps even if you would like to make a new body mesh.

The body skin textures are the only obspace normals I've seen in the game. The rest are tanspace.

And I think I know why those are object space: Neck/wrist/ankle seams. Object space means all the tangent space data is relative to the object coordinates instead of vertex surface coordinates, which means tangent space mismatch along seams can be scratched off the list of potential causes for visible neck/wrist/ankle seams.

Actually makes no difference for me It's like it doesn't even acknowledge my Normal map.

Should I put a specular or diffuse map on my Normal map? How would I go about doing that? Well, I guess JazzJR kindly did that for me and still no luck.

Should I do that method for my texture? And how?

All this object space normals and tangent talk is discouraging me altogether, lol.


In simple terms, it's like this:

1) Extract Bear texture directly from BSA. 2) Edit some colors. but keep everything else the same. 3) Use in game. 4) Shiny.



The fact that I can still use the Vanilla maps and it still be shiny makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Hmm so even if you don't change the vanilla map you still get the shiny issue? otherwise it would be something that has to do with your compression or the changes that you make. I know the heads and body use a separate _s.dds map to define the specularity. Copy the alpha map and paste it into a new texture without alpha channels. Assign the _s.dds map in nifskope after the _n.dds map and see if it makes a difference. Also check if you defined the right _n.dds maps in nifskope just to make sure. I've edited my textures a lot of the time and never ran into this issue there must be something you are doing wrong. Could you reupload the .dds texture with the correct alpha channel so I can also have a look at it !

I found your error Your Texture Map was WAY to bright. It was complete White. I added a 55% layer black on it and now it looks good
So it wasn't anything fatal. You should NEVER use complete white in a texture

Screenshot comes here

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b74/Desert-Rat/Skyrim/TESV2011-12-2723-42-55-95.jpg
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b74/Desert-Rat/Skyrim/TESV2011-12-2723-43-00-73.jpg