Hey, I call shenanigans. I've been trying to save and then reopen a _d.dds file with an alpha channel, and ng any which way I've tried. I've tried, the nVidia plugin, with 1 bit and explicit, I've tried Texture Works with it's color + alpha and nothing. I did get your converter to give me back the alpha channel with RGB all black though as a tga from the _d.dds file.
What am I missing?
Oh man, I'm retarded, your converter specializes on the other two maps. Whoa...but if you have any ideas with my problem, I'd appreciate it...
Ok, it may have taken 3 weeks, but I finally figured out why your converter is important. It's late for me now today, but I will verify that, finally, my normal and specular blue channels (AO) won't be crap black.
ysxDreadZero wrote: I see many of you are reporting issues with this tool.. I'm rebuilding the code and will have a new version up soon
PS - FEATURE REQUESTS ARE PERMITTED, SO GO WILD AND I'LL DO MY BEST
jeffglobal wrote: I used your converter on a *_n.dds and it converted it to something photoshop recognized. What do the green and red channels mean in a normal map? Or, is making normal maps something the computer does from your mesh you painted on? Am I missing the whole point that normal maps are only created never modified? 3dsMax just finished installing...sob. I better be able to get the nif file plugin...[update]I COULD install the "latest" plugin, but it no work on FO4 nifs. I call shenanigans.
I know green is gloss/environment map and red is specular map in *_s.dss files.
Would a belly button ring or nipple ring on my more photorealistic model need to be made as a mesh or could I fake that as a normal map? If I use my tatt'ed model texture as a normal map, she gets her tats branded into her! No bueno. Well, a little bueno, but too mean.
I think I'm misunderstanding the workflow.
ysxDreadZero wrote: truthfully, I think Google will be able to answer that clearly, possibly even YouTube.. watch the quixel workflow videos, after that you will know what's what. and just a reminder, remember to inverted normals when opening the converted 1 into Photoshop with "Ctrl+i"
jeffglobal wrote: @Dread The Quixel tutorials are incomplete for a person that knows the same as a real life house painter. I got lucky and found out in the preferences of my Photoshop, my fking gpu wasn't enabled and I fixed the 3D menu...little stuff like that stops me. Why the fk doesn't the software autodetect my freakin gpu? idk. Furthermore, there are competing software and competing ways they use and name what they are trying to do: Quixel, Substance Designer, 3D Coat, CrazyBump. Hey, I was starting to get happy thinking I knew a little more than I did until I watched a video of some SoB "fixing" a normal photograph diffuse map into an Albedo map f'ing around with the shadows to make some avg thing work. I KNOW abedo is just the texture sans everything else, but holy crap, wtf was he doing... I have to watch that video again. I was pretty good with 3ds max like 8 years ago, and I just reinstalled the 2016 version and the nif plugin for the 2016 version only to find Bethesda must have encrypted their nifs cause the nif importer no worka mofo ka, and yet a NifSkope version DOES read the files but doesn't export to 3ds. The way 3ds used to paint their stuff without plugins was horrendous years ago.
I'm gonna get a few example meshes from the mods/tutorial category and practice with the various software until Bethesda allow us to fix their subpar stuff. I'm so green, I don't understand why the _d.dds texture of the companions changes color so drastically, because I'm gonna replace the vanilla skin, with real skin, cause photoshop can do stuff like that super easy. Then I'll play with the converter here and other tools to see how they work and what does the best for my needs.
ysxDreadZero wrote: Bethesda have utilised 64bit. That is why nifs cannot be read by importers or exported.. it will come, eventually, but until then I guess all we can do is texture, the shitty ones that Bethesda left us are pathetic but hey, gameplay and compatibility is most important. And might I add, if you'd like help other than YouTube, feel free to drop me a pm, I'll share my knowledge..
Jeff, the red and green normal map channels are as follows.
Spoiler:
Show
Light source from top right goes into the green channel. Light source from bottom left goes into red channel. Ambient occlusion goes in blue channel. Using this, you can make your own normal maps from flattened textures the exact same way CrazyBump does. But it will have that overly shiny effect when done, just like CrazyBump has. There really is no true substitute for making them manually from the layers of a PSD file. Even LOD normal mapping ( that's the term for the high poly baking 'render to texture' to a low poly to get the normal map ) has it's issues and limitations, where PSD normal mapping is all about freedom and control. Yes, I'm aware I just threw a bunch of esoteric terms at you lol. It's okay. There is a point in all of our lives where everything is esoteric.
@Mr. Dave. Ty for this insight. I am learning how to use forums in such a way I can find my last posts. Forums remind me of the old bulletin board over the phone information exchanges when 9600 baud was a step up. That's how long I've NOT used forums.
thanks for the tool but I have a little problem converting specular files.
files generated from a .tga files with your tool give me a clear, almost white , blue channel, whic is completely wrong. the .tga has a pure black in the blue channel and it looks like your tool generate the files and makes the same mistake the photoshop .dds plugin does.Same result. spec files are mostly green or reddish in FO4, due to the blue channel being used for AO and mostly never used on models. The .tga file I used to generate the .dds with this tool, looks like the one I used to make for Skyrim.
I'm using the NVidia cammand lines tools to make the specs of FO4 models and I made this particular .tga a .dds without problems.So I know my . tga file is good.Simply, when I use your tool, it looks like generated with the Nvidia photoshop plugin.
Hope you can look into it because doing .bat file to make .dds and such is painfull, and your tool could be a life saver.
No lol! The only thing that bothers me is I can't use it. Avira isn't as bad as Panda, which blocks access to its own updates, but it's gotten pretty crappy over the past few years. Hell, it thinks Audition is a virus. Just gonna switch AV and get rid of it altogether. I'm just posting it so that anyone else with Avira will know it's a false positive.
To be quite honest.. I've given up on anti-virus programs.. Too much of a pain and the closest thing to an anti virus which I use now is Win Defender.. lol.. keeps threats out so I'm satisfied..
Thanks for making this bro. I used crazybump to convert normal maps but they came out a bit off in some situations. Now using FOAM it looks all perfect.
I used your converter on a *_n.dds and it converted it to something photoshop recognized. What do the green and red channels mean in a normal map? Or, is making normal maps something the computer does from your mesh you painted on? Am I missing the whole point that normal maps are only created never modified? 3dsMax just finished installing...sob. I better be able to get the nif file plugin...[update]I COULD install the "latest" plugin, but it no work on FO4 nifs. I call shenanigans.
I know green is gloss/environment map and red is specular map in *_s.dss files.
Would a belly button ring or nipple ring on my more photorealistic model need to be made as a mesh or could I fake that as a normal map? If I use my tatt'ed model texture as a normal map, she gets her tats branded into her! No bueno. Well, a little bueno, but too mean.
truthfully, I think Google will be able to answer that clearly, possibly even YouTube.. watch the quixel workflow videos, after that you will know what's what. and just a reminder, remember to inverted normals when opening the converted 1 into Photoshop with "Ctrl+i"
@Dread The Quixel tutorials are incomplete for a person that knows the same as a real life house painter. I got lucky and found out in the preferences of my Photoshop, my fking gpu wasn't enabled and I fixed the 3D menu...little stuff like that stops me. Why the fk doesn't the software autodetect my freakin gpu? idk. Furthermore, there are competing software and competing ways they use and name what they are trying to do: Quixel, Substance Designer, 3D Coat, CrazyBump. Hey, I was starting to get happy thinking I knew a little more than I did until I watched a video of some SoB "fixing" a normal photograph diffuse map into an Albedo map f'ing around with the shadows to make some avg thing work. I KNOW abedo is just the texture sans everything else, but holy crap, wtf was he doing... I have to watch that video again. I was pretty good with 3ds max like 8 years ago, and I just reinstalled the 2016 version and the nif plugin for the 2016 version only to find Bethesda must have encrypted their nifs cause the nif importer no worka mofo ka, and yet a NifSkope version DOES read the files but doesn't export to 3ds. The way 3ds used to paint their stuff without plugins was horrendous years ago.
I'm gonna get a few example meshes from the mods/tutorial category and practice with the various software until Bethesda allow us to fix their subpar stuff. I'm so green, I don't understand why the _d.dds texture of the companions changes color so drastically, because I'm gonna replace the vanilla skin, with real skin, cause photoshop can do stuff like that super easy. Then I'll play with the converter here and other tools to see how they work and what does the best for my needs.
Bethesda have utilised 64bit. That is why nifs cannot be read by importers or exported.. it will come, eventually, but until then I guess all we can do is texture, the shitty ones that Bethesda left us are pathetic but hey, gameplay and compatibility is most important. And might I add, if you'd like help other than YouTube, feel free to drop me a pm, I'll share my knowledge..
Jeff, the red and green normal map channels are as follows. Light source from top right goes into the green channel. Light source from bottom left goes into red channel. Ambient occlusion goes in blue channel. Using this, you can make your own normal maps from flattened textures the exact same way CrazyBump does. But it will have that overly shiny effect when done, just like CrazyBump has. There really is no true substitute for making them manually from the layers of a PSD file. Even LOD normal mapping ( that's the term for the high poly baking 'render to texture' to a low poly to get the normal map ) has it's issues and limitations, where PSD normal mapping is all about freedom and control. Yes, I'm aware I just threw a bunch of esoteric terms at you lol. It's okay. There is a point in all of our lives where everything is esoteric.
56 comments
This is the result i get
https://i.imgur.com/RyKUITo.png
What am I missing?
Oh man, I'm retarded, your converter specializes on the other two maps. Whoa...but if you have any ideas with my problem, I'd appreciate it...
Ty for your plugin.
@Mr. Dave. Ty for this insight. I am learning how to use forums in such a way I can find my last posts. Forums remind me of the old bulletin board over the phone information exchanges when 9600 baud was a step up. That's how long I've NOT used forums.
thanks for the tool but I have a little problem converting specular files.
files generated from a .tga files with your tool give me a clear, almost white , blue channel, whic is completely wrong.
the .tga has a pure black in the blue channel and it looks like your tool generate the files and makes the same mistake the photoshop .dds plugin does.Same result.
spec files are mostly green or reddish in FO4, due to the blue channel being used for AO and mostly never used on models.
The .tga file I used to generate the .dds with this tool, looks like the one I used to make for Skyrim.
I'm using the NVidia cammand lines tools to make the specs of FO4 models and I made this particular .tga a .dds without problems.So I know my . tga file is good.Simply, when I use your tool, it looks like generated with the Nvidia photoshop plugin.
Hope you can look into it because doing .bat file to make .dds and such is painfull, and your tool could be a life saver.
Thanks for your hard work.
AthenaX
HEUR/APC ( CLOUD ) is the positive.
Only a chinese AV that's picking up a virus with the online file scan.
PS - FEATURE REQUESTS ARE PERMITTED, SO GO WILD AND I'LL DO MY BEST
I know green is gloss/environment map and red is specular map in *_s.dss files.
Would a belly button ring or nipple ring on my more photorealistic model need to be made as a mesh or could I fake that as a normal map? If I use my tatt'ed model texture as a normal map, she gets her tats branded into her! No bueno. Well, a little bueno, but too mean.
I think I'm misunderstanding the workflow.
I'm gonna get a few example meshes from the mods/tutorial category and practice with the various software until Bethesda allow us to fix their subpar stuff. I'm so green, I don't understand why the _d.dds texture of the companions changes color so drastically, because I'm gonna replace the vanilla skin, with real skin, cause photoshop can do stuff like that super easy. Then I'll play with the converter here and other tools to see how they work and what does the best for my needs.
Light source from top right goes into the green channel. Light source from bottom left goes into red channel. Ambient occlusion goes in blue channel. Using this, you can make your own normal maps from flattened textures the exact same way CrazyBump does. But it will have that overly shiny effect when done, just like CrazyBump has.
There really is no true substitute for making them manually from the layers of a PSD file. Even LOD normal mapping ( that's the term for the high poly baking 'render to texture' to a low poly to get the normal map ) has it's issues and limitations, where PSD normal mapping is all about freedom and control.
Yes, I'm aware I just threw a bunch of esoteric terms at you lol. It's okay. There is a point in all of our lives where everything is esoteric.