I have never textured or modeled anything, but I am trying to get into it and basically all I have accomplished so far is to install Photoshop, 3ds max, Fallout Mod Manager, and NifSkope.

Anyways, some questions:


1) Why do most models, extracted with FMM, show me a purple and blue normal map when loaded into nifskope? For example, the boundswordencheffects nif is this purple and blue blob, so I can't really see what it looks like.

2) When I open up a texture in photoshop, do I want to load MIP maps or not?

3) When saving a modified texture in photoshop (with dds plugin) I often get an error that says the image size must be a multiple of 4. This confuses me, because the image didn't change size (or at least, I don't think it did) since all I did was mess with the colors. This error goes away when I tell it to use existing MIP maps, but I have yet to see my texture actually work. To be honest, I have no idea what any of the normal map or MIP map settings do and I haven't messed with them at all really.

1. The bound weapons are a mix of the deadric weapons wwith some animated textures flowing around them. Nifskope cant show these animations, so it looks like a blob of 3D geometry. Pick ANY other object other then the bound items and it should look just fine.

2. No, but be sure to generate them when saving.

3. Textures must be resolution in powers of 2. IE 32x32, 64x64, 128x 128, 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048, etc.

Thanks for the reply!

For question 3, I am still confused. Since I am loading an unpacked texture from a BSA, that is already being used by the game, how come when I go to save it the resolution is no longer a power of 2?