Exact TexGen capabilities ?

[Kesta]

Hi,

 

Opening a separate thread as this isn't exactly for conventionnal use, and because TexGen is a bit of his own tool which don't have its dedicated mega thread. Sorry if that was a bad idea.

 

 

 

So, I was hoping I could be lazy: I have a set of retextured vanilla cliffs/mountain/etc (Basicaly anything that use MountainSlab texture) which are their own forms (as in, at the end of the day, I want to have access to both the regular vanilla meshes, and the retextured ones, not just a simple retex).

 

Now, to give them LOD... My idea was to copy paste the vanilla LOD into its own folder, give the files proper prefix, and then point my new duplicated forms to them.

After that, I would batch edit the texture path on those LODs nifs to point to new lod textures matching the mountainslab.

In order to make work quick and easy, rather than editing dozen of low rez textures, or re-decimating the retextured nifs (because I actually need to do this not once, but for 3 full sets...), I hoped I could simply override the vanilla mountainslab texture with those new ones, run TexGen, and that it would give me all the textures I need.

 

Problem is: Aside from high detail LOD using the normal texture, those have their own dedicated texture. For instance, mountaincliff02_lod_1.nif use MtnCliff02LOD.dds. I hoped TexGen would be able not only generate mountainslablod.dds but all those needed variant as well (which I could then rename / move to a different folder, and use for retextured LODs). But it didn't.

 

 

Was this just a too optimistic assertion on my end, or did I failed something in my process ?

I haven't modded Skyrim in a while, so I apologize if I missed something obvious, but I'm almost sure that if I download a simple retex for the mountainslab, running texgen and rebuilding LOD would allow me to have all mountain LOD levels properly textured as well ?

Edited August 20, 2018 by Kesta

[sheson]

TexGen can not create pre-rendered textures. That has been asked and explained many times before. Those LOD textures are covered by mods like HD LODs or in case like Majestic Mountains are included.

 

TexGen takes full textures and can resize and place them to build new textures. It can remove alpha and modify color tone/brightness.

 

You can find out more detail in DynDOLOD_TexGen.html and DynDOLOD_Mod_Authors.html

 

 

Bethesdas convention is to add the major new texture name / color to the end not as a prefix.

 

For example mountaincliffslope_lod_0.nif

 

-> mountaincliffslopegreen_lod_0.nif

-> mountaincliffslopesnow_lod_0.nif

-> mountaincliffslopeyellow_lod_0.nif

 

For the automatic renaming and texture replacement in the NIF I used to use niftoaster and a powershell command line like

 

niftoaster.py --source-dir=brown --dest-dir=green -a /textures\\lod\\dirt02lod/textures\\lod\\pineforest02lod modify_substitutetexturepath brown

ls green | Rename-Item -NewName {$_ -replace 'brown', 'green' }

 

Setting up niftoaster is a pain though if you are new to python and stuff. Nowadays an xEdit script can do that. "NIF - Batch textures replacement.pas" would be a good start to make this automated.

 

The thing is, using specially named LOD meshes which point to different LOD textures is the (old) CK way.

 

Going forward I only create one LOD model but still have it define the full texture and Bethesdas full model naming conventions of the 3D shape names. Then DynDOLOD + LODGen can use the defined Texture Sets to first replace the full model texture and then replace to the LOD texture on the fly.

 

However this method won't work with CK / xLODGen obviously which expects the correct LOD model defined on the base record, so each texture varition requires a new NIF.

Edited August 20, 2018 by sheson

[Kesta]

All right, I was indeed being too optimistic ^^ thanks.

 

Sorry, I missed the info about pre-rendered textures not being supported. And thanks for all the extra convention details :)