Retex Troubleshooting

Pink Surfaces (Wrong texture-name)

When the game can't find the texture, your retextured model is completely pink.

When this occurs, the obvious first step is to check again if the file really exists, and if the name of your texture and the texture-entry in the .NIF file are identical.

There are two things that can be missed easily, though:

• Make sure that the texture in the NIF begins with "textures\" not "\textures\" or "C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\Textures\". Oblivion internally adds "Oblivion\data\" and everything but "Textures\" would result in an illegal filename.

• Always use the backslash ("\") not the slash ("/"). While Morrowind didn't care which one you used, Oblivion does, and it only accepts the "\".

• Check the file extension so it has ".dds" or ".tga".

Invisible Body Parts (Missing normal map)

A quite common problem with retexturing is the disappearance of bodyparts, especially when you use a retextured armor. This is caused by a missing normal map. For some reason the game seems to mix up an object's axes when the normal map is missing.

• Retextured static object without a normal map suddenly flip around one axis when you turn them on another axis in the Render Window.

• Retextured Armor seems to have invisible bodyparts, this is the same symptom, the game tries to turn them around one axis and they flip over on the other, out of the player's view.

• You can see it very nice when retexturing amulets: When you equip a retextured amulet that has no normal map, the amulet is displayed on your back in the inventory screen. When you turn your character around, the amulet moves to the opposite direction.

How to solve the problem:

Every texture needs a normal map, a file with the texture-name and an "_n" appended. This file can be found in the same folder as the original textures, and most of the time you just need to copy/rename it.

There is another thing you need to keep in mind, though: The game is designed to have similar textures (like shop signs) share one normal map. To realize this, the normal map's filename is determined by the texture's filename simply by truncating it at the position of the first underscore ("_") and appending "_n.dds".

So either avoid using the underscore in filenames (and paths) or make sure your normal map is named correctly:

Textures\Mymod\NewArmor\myGreatCuirass.dds

Textures\Mymod\NewArmor\myGreatCuirass_n.dds

Textures\Mymod\NewArmor\myGreat_Cuirass.dds

Textures\Mymod\NewArmor\myGreat_n.dds

Textures\Mymod\NewArmor\my_Great_Cuirass.dds

Textures\Mymod\NewArmor\my_n.dds

Textures\Mymod\New_Armor\my_Great_Cuirass.dds

Textures\Mymod\New_n.dds

Textures\My_mod\New_Armor\my_Great_Cuirass.dds

Textures\My_n.dds

Black Surfaces (Missing normal map or no alpha channel in nomal map)

This is usually a side-effect of a missing normal map, but can also be caused by a normal map that has no alpha-channel.

Objects that have gloss use the normal map's alpha channel to determine how reflective each part of the object is. When the game can't find the normal map, the object looks very dark or even black, because those nif files are set to faint emission of black color, and without an alpha channel, the black color leaks out everywhere.

When the normal map is missing, you'll also experience abnormal behaviour in the inventory window especially for rings and amulets, as described above.

Objects with a strong emissive black color and much gloss (Jewelery for example) might even appear black instead of pink when the game can find no texture at all, see the infos on missing textures above.

Sometimes objects can appear black in the Construction Set, but show their textures properly when playing.

No glowing or glowing on wrong parts (Missing Glowmap)

Some objects (Glass or Daedric armor for example) require a glow map. ("texture_g.dds")

The glow map determines the strength of the "emissive color" that is emitted by a part of the armor. White areas glow with the full strength set in the NIF-File, while black areas don't glow at all.

Without a glowmap, all parts of the texture that are in the same general color as the emissive color are glowing (when you set a red emissive color in NifSkope for example, the whole body of an orange creature will glow.) with a glowmap you can be more selective and have only the eyes of the creature glowing red.

Clipping Problems (Missing EGM-file)

If you've retextured clothing type items (especially for heads) you may get clipping problems, wherby parts of the head show through the helmet.

The clipping problem occurs because of the face sliders which mean that features can be in different positions for different characters. The solution is the .egm file, which applies the facegen data to the mesh.

If you're encountering clipping problems then, chances are you either didn't copy over the relevant .egm file into the same folder as the .nif; or you haven't named the .egm with the same name as the .nif