I like me some giant death dealer axe endorsed Also have you ever seen a Kilij it's a rather interesting sabre/sword from Romania but anywhozal endorsed G8 Co8 M8n 8/8
These are in no specific order. Remove the alpha channel from the diffuse texture and save it as DXT1RGB. If you are using GIMP, please download ATI's Compressonator and use that to save as dds. GIMP cannot save some dds file formats correctly.
The waraxebloodfx [5] is missing its texture information. You can open any other nif that has blood while having your axe open and copy branch, then paste branch into the children slot in the main bsfadenode children list. just right clock the correct blood and hit paste branch.
You have an environment map listed in the nif file, but it is not included.
Try shinyglass_e instead of shinydull_e, then you can adjust the alpha channel of the normal map and your enviornment map to suit for the shine.
On your blood meshes. They need to be pushed out by an increment of 1. Well, more accurately a click of 1. The increment can be 0.01. It just needs to be a wee bit larger than the axe head. In Max, select the blood mesh and then expand the modifier list and select Push. One click in it's amount dialogue is enough. In Blender, just scale it up by the smallest increment you can.
The handle and the small cylinders going to the axe head have way too many segments. You can easily remove every other segment around without losing the shape at all.
Your normal map isn't an actual normal map. Right now it is reading as a color map. You need to use the nVidia normalmapfilter plugin for Photoshop, or you can create one via your diffuse texture and using bas relief. There are a ton of third party programs that will create normal maps, but they are all garbage. The nVidia tools work best. If you still have your diffuse texture saved in layers, you can make the things that nee to be sunken in dark, and the things that need to pop out lighter. Flatten the image, then apply the normalmapfilter to it. If all you have is GIMP, click here https://code.google.com/p/gimp-normalmap/
For the bas relief method ( it is wonky and works about as well as CrazyBump ) make 3 layers of your diffuse texture. Apply a top right bas relief filter to one, and a bottom left bas relief to another. Now copy/paste the top right bas relief into the green channel of the diffuse, and the bottom left into the red channel. Floodfill the blue channel with white. It isn't perfect, but it will work in a pinch. If you ever just need a filler, you can fill the texture with R128, G128, B255 and it will give you a smooth normal map.
The alpha channel of the normal map is for specular shine. So old wood and dirt need to be pretty much black. Glass should be white. The brighter, the shinier and the more dull, the darker it needs to be. Same goes for the environment map.
Somehow your blood mesh for [5] got moved -1 on the X axis. This could be due to scaling it in NifSkope. You can click up 1 in the transforms X Translation to set it back into place. Just right click it, mouse over Edit and hit Transform. Then click the up arrow for X once.
Once done with editing, in NifSkope hit Spells-> Batch-> Update all Tangent Spaces.
Thanks for the advice. You pretty much listed all the stuff I need to learn how to do better, so my next mod will hopefully be better. I really appreciate the feedback.
Dave you liked the model too, huh. You have a good eye as always.
I wanted to actually ask you Despato if you might be able to send me your PSD for your diffuse map. I wanted to try experimenting making some normal maps. If I make something good, maybe you test it out (I'll also explain how I came about making the normal map). I really like this model and would love to work on it if you might be interested in doing so :3.
These may come in handy. nVidia tools for Photoshop. Includes the normal map filter. https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop
ATI's Compressonator in case you are stuck with GIMP. Ironically enough, the Compressonator trumps nVidia's tools for anti aliasing and diminishing artifacts. Dimon suggested years ago that I try it out, and we did some tests. It's an impressive tool. http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/archive/legacy-cpu-gpu-tools/the-compressonator/
And if you ever wanna make your own cube maps, this is cool for testing them out and editing them. I still would recommend making them manually though. http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/archive/legacy-cpu-gpu-tools/cubemapgen/
shingouki, oh hell yeah! I'm all over anything that isn't a generic Eurosword lol. We have entirely too many Excalibur Euroclones already. I don't even bother clicking on them anymore.
Oh sweet, those look like super useful tool. I'm glad you like the design, I try and be as unique as I can. I'm using GIMP right now, just because I don't want to pay for/torrent PS, but it works well for me. I'm actually working on a new mod right now that should be a big improvement over this one due to better normals, spec, ect.. I'd show you some screenshots if you're interested.
Yeah that'd be cool. Throw me a PM and I'll send you my email. I also have a fairly extensive texture library that I have created over the past decade, so if you need anything specific, just yell. I have a texture resource page here, but it's mostly generic stuff that the majority of people may find useful. I haven't put any specialty items up that I can think of.
Since you are using GIMP, to save diffuse textures that need no alpha channel, just save them out of GIMP as png files and then use the Compressonator to save them as DXT1RGB. The normal maps can be saved out of GIMP using the dds tools for it, since they need alphas and need to be saved as DXT5ARGB.
Some keywords to Google image search when you have time... Luristan, Mesopotamia weapons, Daegok-ri bronze, Mycenaean.
10 comments
Remove the alpha channel from the diffuse texture and save it as DXT1RGB. If you are using GIMP, please download ATI's Compressonator and use that to save as dds. GIMP cannot save some dds file formats correctly.
The waraxebloodfx [5] is missing its texture information. You can open any other nif that has blood while having your axe open and copy branch, then paste branch into the children slot in the main bsfadenode children list. just right clock the correct blood and hit paste branch.
You have an environment map listed in the nif file, but it is not included.
Try shinyglass_e instead of shinydull_e, then you can adjust the alpha channel of the normal map and your enviornment map to suit for the shine.
On your blood meshes. They need to be pushed out by an increment of 1. Well, more accurately a click of 1. The increment can be 0.01. It just needs to be a wee bit larger than the axe head.
In Max, select the blood mesh and then expand the modifier list and select Push. One click in it's amount dialogue is enough.
In Blender, just scale it up by the smallest increment you can.
The handle and the small cylinders going to the axe head have way too many segments. You can easily remove every other segment around without losing the shape at all.
Your normal map isn't an actual normal map. Right now it is reading as a color map. You need to use the nVidia normalmapfilter plugin for Photoshop, or you can create one via your diffuse texture and using bas relief. There are a ton of third party programs that will create normal maps, but they are all garbage. The nVidia tools work best.
If you still have your diffuse texture saved in layers, you can make the things that nee to be sunken in dark, and the things that need to pop out lighter. Flatten the image, then apply the normalmapfilter to it. If all you have is GIMP, click here https://code.google.com/p/gimp-normalmap/
For the bas relief method ( it is wonky and works about as well as CrazyBump ) make 3 layers of your diffuse texture.
Apply a top right bas relief filter to one, and a bottom left bas relief to another.
Now copy/paste the top right bas relief into the green channel of the diffuse, and the bottom left into the red channel. Floodfill the blue channel with white.
It isn't perfect, but it will work in a pinch.
If you ever just need a filler, you can fill the texture with R128, G128, B255 and it will give you a smooth normal map.
The alpha channel of the normal map is for specular shine. So old wood and dirt need to be pretty much black. Glass should be white. The brighter, the shinier and the more dull, the darker it needs to be. Same goes for the environment map.
Somehow your blood mesh for [5] got moved -1 on the X axis. This could be due to scaling it in NifSkope. You can click up 1 in the transforms X Translation to set it back into place. Just right click it, mouse over Edit and hit Transform. Then click the up arrow for X once.
Once done with editing, in NifSkope hit Spells-> Batch-> Update all Tangent Spaces.
Umm... I think that covers it.
I wanted to actually ask you Despato if you might be able to send me your PSD for your diffuse map. I wanted to try experimenting making some normal maps. If I make something good, maybe you test it out (I'll also explain how I came about making the normal map). I really like this model and would love to work on it if you might be interested in doing so :3.
nVidia tools for Photoshop. Includes the normal map filter.
https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop
ATI's Compressonator in case you are stuck with GIMP.
Ironically enough, the Compressonator trumps nVidia's tools for anti aliasing and diminishing artifacts.
Dimon suggested years ago that I try it out, and we did some tests. It's an impressive tool.
http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/archive/legacy-cpu-gpu-tools/the-compressonator/
And if you ever wanna make your own cube maps, this is cool for testing them out and editing them.
I still would recommend making them manually though.
http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/archive/legacy-cpu-gpu-tools/cubemapgen/
shingouki, oh hell yeah! I'm all over anything that isn't a generic Eurosword lol. We have entirely too many Excalibur Euroclones already. I don't even bother clicking on them anymore.
I'm using GIMP right now, just because I don't want to pay for/torrent PS, but it works well for me. I'm actually working on a new mod right now that should be a big improvement over this one due to better normals, spec, ect.. I'd show you some screenshots if you're interested.
I also have a fairly extensive texture library that I have created over the past decade, so if you need anything specific, just yell. I have a texture resource page here, but it's mostly generic stuff that the majority of people may find useful. I haven't put any specialty items up that I can think of.
Since you are using GIMP, to save diffuse textures that need no alpha channel, just save them out of GIMP as png files and then use the Compressonator to save them as DXT1RGB. The normal maps can be saved out of GIMP using the dds tools for it, since they need alphas and need to be saved as DXT5ARGB.
Some keywords to Google image search when you have time...
Luristan, Mesopotamia weapons, Daegok-ri bronze, Mycenaean.