Title is pretty self explanatory.

I was wondering if anyone out there would be able to help me out with taking a screenshot (or any given image file really) and converting it into a picutre/painting that could be viewed in-game.

Ideally this tutorial will be as noob-friendly as possible (for maximum benefit, not just my own ).

Bump

Do you have GIMP (or another graphics editing program like Photoshop) and Nifscope? You will probably need both, but you'll definitely need something to create the texture. Is there a picture frame in the vanilla assets? I'm not sure, but I don't remember one. So, you'll need a mesh or model to use. Once you have the mesh and base texture, you can pull the texture up in your editing software, paste and scale your screenshot into a layer. From there, there are literally dozens of things you can do to make it more realistic from easy stuff like playing with the opacity, adding in other layers to give it texture and even full on lighting changes using the "curves" feature in GIMP. But, basically once you get it where you want it, you export it to your textures directory as a DDS file with mipmaps, set the texture path in nifscope to your texture and create a new static in the CK for your new picture. Then, just place it where you want it and you're good to go.

I'll look when I get home this evening to see if there are pictures/frames in vanilla Skyrim. If not, I believe someone uploaded a modders resource of picture frames that will probably work nicely. Do you have any experience with any of this? It's not that hard really (especially if I can do it, lol), but you'll need to know some basic stuff to get there. I'll be happy to try and help.

OK, I just checked, and didn't find any kind of artwork in the vanilla assets. Moreover, in a modders resource I found (link below) the author saya there are none as well, so I think we can conclude you'll need to use his resources to accomplish what you are trying to do. Now, there a couple of things I need to know. Once I know where we're coming from and going to, we can begin learning how to put it together.

1) Do you have any experience with using the CK, working with and adding assets to the game?

2) How many different frames out of the resources would you like to use and what ones do you like?

Resource link: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17423

I've been aware of that resource mod for awhile. It's actually what prompted me to want to do my own. There are some absolutely stunning screenshots out there added by the community (especially on some ENB pages). How great if there was a resource out there which was continually updated and included some of the best screenshots we've managed to conjure up?

Obviously obtaining permissions in the early stages of this mod could be quite tricky but once enough recognition has been gained I hope that people will be sending me their screenshots for inclusion.

Anyway, I digress.

I have the latest versions of Gimp and NifSkope, but I consider my mastery of them to be fairly trivial

CK Skills: A difficult thing to quantify. I consider my experience with the previous construction set for TESIV to be quite extensive, to the point that I haven't done any of the tutorials for (very cursory skimming) for Creation Kit.
I don't have any prior programming skills and everything I know about this tool is self taught from the wiki and this community.

As a side note: Up until now, I've largely avoided Papyrus but will tackle those tutorials soon and immerse myself in it.


I have neglected to delve further into that mod for the present (being kept quite busy with a large house mod I'm working on) but I would like the skill-set to be able to utilise any of the frames/possibly even make my own if for some reason none were suitable.

/wall of text

OK, that's exactly what I needed to know. With just a quick glance at those resources, it looks like Artisanix has knocked it out of the park in terms of his resources being user friendly. I'll need to pick it apart this evening when I get home, but it looks like the frames are all made with one mesh and each individual "canvas" is another texture all by itself. So this should make it so easy to create additional artwork for the frames in GIMP. I believe that there will be no real skill required other than scaling and cropping your screen shots. It looks like he even made normals for everything too!

As for the CK, it sounds like you should have no problem working in it. But here's what we will be doing in the CK:

CK Techniques
- Working within the meshes and textures directories
- Creating new Static assets
- Creating new texture sets*
- Applying texture sets to your new static assets

* Texture sets are not necessary if you set each of your meshes to point to your textures via Nifscope. However, since you want to do a bunch of these, I think the texture set technique might be better than using the Nifscope procedure. Plus, it's one less program to have to work with.

You'll need the DDS plugin installed in GIMP however:

GIMP DDS plugin - http://registry.gimp.org/node/70

More to come later.

OK, I'm finalizing and uploading now.

Tutorial 1 - Skyrim Custom Oil Paintings - Getting Started

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k28k_6ChNks

Tutorial 2 - Skyrim Custom Oil Paintings - Cropping and Scaling your Screenshot in GIMP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GPkyIZogkM

Tutorial 3 - Skyrim Custom Oil Paintings - Use filters in GIMP to customize your Screenshot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLBwcOYTiCc

Tutorial 4 - Skyrim Custom Oil Paintings - Creating Normal Maps for your painting in GIMP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DG00lv_S30

Tutorial 5 - Skyrim Custom Oil Paintings - Getting your custom art into the Creation Kit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptfb5LMnP34

Tutorial 6 - Skyrim Custom Oil Paintings - Loose Ends and final thoughts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC5R7wrj8eg

Nice job on the videos !! Very detailed and covers the process well.

Wow man, I'm blown away by your response.

I saw that you were posting about Fraps not capturing the CK properly and using something like Camtasia instead, I had no idea it was for this

This is awesome, I bet we're going to see quite an increase in mods featuring artwork now. Excccccellent.

Thanks guys! (Truth be told, I only did them so the world could hear my sixy southern drawl! )

But seriously, I've been wanting to start getting into doing some video editing for trailers and tutorials like this one. It's the first tutorial I've ever done, so hopefully it isin't too noobish. I can't believe how much I say "umm", and how frigging hard it is to force yourself NOT to do it, lol.)

EDIT: Added one final video to clarify that users will need to create a texture set for the actual picture frames, as well as the artwork.

I'll second that. Thank you for doing these tutorials. It's much appreciated.

Thanks guys, I'd like to see some pics or even your own vids of what you come up with too. And if you used any other techniques or came up with something I didn't cover, please post that as well. I'm still learning too, and if enough of us share our tips we cam all get better for it! Thanks again!

My folder for this mod currently has ~500 screenshots for consideration. Regrettably about 350+ of these aren't screenshots of mine, so when I want to release getting permissions will be tedious.
In the long run I would like to publish a mod that I update every month or so with shots that have been submitted and voted for by the community.