So, I've worked my way through Maixs' texturing tutorial and I'm trying to get my poster in the game correctly. It's in there, but it's all sized wrong. See pics here: http://ypdesign.com/fnv/bucks/texture_fail.htm


On a positive note, (I feel) the one I aged came out pretty nice for a noob with zero artistic skills. (Thanks only to a great tutorial by Miax! Thanks Miax!)

So, the first one was really screwed up because I'm flying by the seat of my azz with nifscope. So I decided to try the easy route of just using my texture to retext the Poseidon Energy poster. That's easy enough to rename and drop in my texture folder, or so I thought. The positioning is all f'd up and cut off the right side.

I pulled up the dds file for the vanilla poster, and it's 512x512, but the actual poster only takes up less than half of the 512x512. The rest appears to be transparent? So, I pulled up the 2nd image you see (the rat pack one) and sized it the same in my 512x512 dds file, exported it and so on. It looked right compared to the PoseidonEnergyAged.dds file until I went in the game and you see what it looks like in the 2nd pics.

1) what am I missing in the transparency as it gave me some errors in gimp when I tried to save it, and also said something about compression and cant compress if it's not a multiple of 4? (I thought 512x512 was a multiple of 4) And then it said something about multiples of 2, lol.

2) why is half of the poster cut off?

If I get ONE working like I want it, I should then be able to just use copies of the same model, go in nifscope and point it to the texture I want, right?

(I'm sorry these are totally noob questions, but this is the first time I've done this, so I'm a very frustrated noob.) :banghead:

I have to use some odd workarounds, I'm running windows on a apple ProMac. what it sounds like to me your issue is somewhat similar to an issue I've run into. Try cropping your texture at the file borders, the mac version of photoshop doesn't actually delete information that passes the borders. This throws off the dds file with size and registration.

feel free to PM me or, give me a link to the file and I'll try to figure out where your texture has gong bad.

cev

Thank's cev, if it weren't for nice folks like you willing to help us noobs learn, this whole modding thing would totally svck. Here's the file url: http://ypdesign.com/fnv/Baloks_Poster.zip

It's no trouble at all, I will first say I'm not that well versed with gimp, I mostly use photoshop and, only use gimp to convert back to .dds because there is no mac photoshop .dds plugin.

The texture you sent me was not the right size, it was 348 x469 when it should have ben 512 x 512. If you use the original texture as a templet you'll see where the image should fall inside the texture, There is a lot of negative space surrounding the image which is throwing off your position. (Don't think it's a mistake on your end now.) Also, your texture didn't have an alpha channel which is used to mask off what is to be transparent.

I'm in the process of building you a templet with guides and, in both photoshop PSD and, .dds format which you then should be able to use as a base for future posters using the Poster_Poseidon01_aged texture and, mesh. I could explain how to use the alfa channels in photoshop but, I've never bothered learning it in gimp. I would suggest contacting Miax directly. He is a friend and, is very assessable, I'm sure he will go out of his way to help, just ask.

once, I test the new texture I'll upload it for you, all you'll need to do is set up a new texture set and, go.

Edit: Wow! I think I'm going to have to cut you! :swear: My test failed also, I've got a workaround in progress but, just wanted to let you know there is something more sinister going on with this texture.

be, back when I get a fix.

cev

Wow again, I don't know if something has changed in the Texture design but, I had to place a one point key line around the texture to maintain image size and, proportions. :brokencomputer:

here is a link to your poster in a properly working fashion. http://www.4shared.com/file/M1QniBNR/posters.html

hope this helps,

cev

OK cev, thanks a LOT. Please tell me what if anything I did wrong because there are several more of these I want to make, and I still need to age that one. I mean, I don't understand why what I did didn't work. Is this another bug in the GECK? It all seemed pretty straight forward to me.

I don't see that you've done anything wrong at this point. for some reason the only way I could force registration was to use a stroke (Key line) on the 512 x512 document boarders. I have never seen this kind of issue in FO3, for some reason when converting back from a photoshop .PSD to a .dds the transparent areas which were needed got lost, throwing off your textures position.

I don't know if it is a GIMP issue or, a GECK issue but, GIMP does seem to be changing or, should I say ignoring the transparency, as I've said the only way I could force GIMP to hold the true file size was to place a one point (pixel) stroke around the document boarders. I'm assuming something has changed with the textures though, in FO3 when you had negative space it was always in a shade of gray. When I opened up the vanilla texture it was orange. I used the alfa channel to make it transparent.

cev

::lightbulb:: OK, I think I understand now. Essentially what you're saying is that it was basically ignoring the transparent space from the edges of my poster all the way to the 512x512 perimeter of the image file size. So adding in the stroke forced it to "see" the transparent area and keep the poster image the correct size? Holy crap, this stuff could actually drive a man to drinking...(more?!?!?) :brokencomputer: :banghead: :shocking:

Thank's so much again, and I'll post my progress as I go along. This gives me some more ideas! (this could be dangerous!)

Oh yeah, one last thing. If you would like someone to help clutter some of your interiors or even assist in their building I've got a pretty good grasp on the building and cluttering interiors thing.

You can see some stuff I did in my Chekov's mod on my web page here: http://ypdesign.com/fo3/chekovs/index.htm

or a little makeover I did to the Goodsprings School here: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37513

I don't know if you saw the pics of the Steak House I'm doing these posters for, but here are some early pics as well: http://ypdesign.com/fnv/bucks/bucks.htm (I've pretty much got that finished now, so it looks better than those pics show)

Most of what I have done has been very cleaned up and nice as I hate to "live" in squalor, but I can do dirty stuff too, lol.

I'd be glad to help if you would like me to. :icecream:

Yep, on the money! I had to force registration so, as I've said I think something has changed in the texture format. I'm sure as time goes by we'll figure out a proper method.

Once I get NVInteriors off the ground we can talk about some sort of collaboration, at this point I'm only trying to learn enough about the new game to match what I've done in FO3.

cev

I've just had a look at the poster textures, I don't think anything has changed in the texture format for posters.

Using Paint Shop (v7 and v9) with the nVidia Photoshop DDS filters I am able to change the texture and save the file and alpha mask so that it works properly in-game.

I am able to split the mask out from the DDS and save it in a separate file, there's nothing at all unusual about the alpha mask. There's no need for a 1 pixel "frame" as far as I can tell.

No one has yet said what the texture format is: It is 512x512 (or square, sized in powers of 2), 24 (or 32) bits, DXT 5 with 8 mipmaps.

Are you saving the texture as a DXT 5? If you try to save the texture as a DXT 3 then the alpha mask will be wrong, maybe that's part of the problem.

It's more likely that whatever graphics program you're using is not properly saving the DDS format. I read somewhere that the GIMP may displace either (or both) the texture and alpha mask by 1 pixel, that would definitely cause a problem.

You should be able to use the stand-alone nVidia DDS tools to convert a file although the last time I tried to do that it was overly complicated. There are other DDS conversion tools, look on the Oblivion GECK website pages.

Hey, thanks for the info zBobG! Yes, I was doing all of my editing in GIMP and using Miax's tutorial as a guide. It said save in BC3/DTX5 compression so I did, lol. It also said to Generate Mipmaps so I did that as well and saved it in dds format. I do have Paint Shop Pro 7 and am actually more familiar painting stuff in it than GIMP as I used to use it to paint all my race cars for sim racing I've done in the past. I'll see what I can figure out with it this weekend.

Man, this stuff can never just be simple and easy to learn can it? It just is so much headache and work it sometimes seems that it's not worth it to try and learn, especially with all these little idiosyncrasies and bugs to overcome. I worked for nearly 8 hours on that one simple poster (following the tutorial to the letter), and without cev's help I still couldn't get it to work. And honestly, I still don't know if I can get the next one to work even after all this. It's just really hard to stomach, lol. :banghead: :facepalm:

But I guess I'll keep tryin'! :fallout:

OK I got this working for an in game shot. It's a 512x512 resolution texture. I'm amazed it worked on the first try. :celebration: Here's a screenie. How does it look to you?

http://ypdesign.com/fnv/bucks/posters.htm

Looks very nice.

Thank's Max, I wouldn't have been able to do this were it not for your tutorial! I've been adding a few more, and also did a clean version of the first one I did. I'm leaning more towards the clean style as these are more like art than just posters. Here's some more screenies:

http://ypdesign.com/fnv/bucks/posters.htm

Thanks again for the compliment (that means a lot to me) and thanks again for your tut!