GIMP:Retexturing Oblivion
Hail Learner!
This workshop is designed to demystify the art of retexturing .dds files for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. First Let’s outline the tools you will need to complete this workshop and a few unfamiliar terms you need to know! Let’s get started!
| Tools used in this tutorial
Required
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What Tools Do I Need?[edit | edit source]
- BSA Commander - A tool to open Oblivion’s texture archives
- GIMP - A free photo editing software; comparable to Photoshop
- GIMP .dds Plugin - A plugin that allows you to make changes to .dds files
- GIMP Normal Map Plugin - A plugin that allows you to use the Normal Map utility in GIMP
- NifSkope - A tool that allows you to alter meshes for Oblivion.
- TES Construction Set - The tool that allows you to create plugins (mods) for ESIV: Oblivion.
NOTE: If you are running version 1.0 of the game, you will need to patch your game with the Oblivion Patch v1.2.0416 or your mod will not show up in game!
What Terms Should I Know?[edit | edit source]
- DDS
- Means Direct Draw Surface: This is a type of image file used in Oblivion.
- BSA
- Bethesda Softworks Archive: This is a compressed file that contains the game data.
- Mesh
- A mesh is the model that makes up an object, think of it like the core of an object. A mesh is also sometimes called a NIF because meshes for Oblivion are called NetImmerseFiles and end in .nif.
- Texture
- A texture is the skin of an object; it’s what you see in game!
- Normal Map
- If a mesh is the core and a texture is the skin then a normal map is the glue that holds the two together. A Normal map tells the game which parts of the texture have depth. Normal maps have the same name as their matching texture with _n added to the end and nearly every texture needs one!
Getting Started[edit | edit source]
Okay, now that you have your tools installed and ready to go and you have some lingo under your belt, let’s dive into retexturing! For this six part tutorial, we will be retexturing an upper class blanket from red/gold to silver/ blue. I will guide you step by step from unpacking the BSA archive to seeing your hard work in game and every step in between. This tutorial is designed for the absolute beginner, so feel free to skip ahead if you already know some of these steps!
Part 01: Unpacking the BSA[edit | edit source]
| Let’s open the BSA Commander. When it’s open you’ll be looking at something like this: | |
| If you’re not very PC savvy you may already be thinking "Oh…boy!" Relax. Everything new can seem overwhelming at first, but with some practice you’ll be flying through these steps with ease. First thing we need to do is unpack the blanket texture for our bed.
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| Now, wait a minute or two for the entire archive to open up in the window. This may take some time for those of you on slower computers; it may even say "Not Responding", just wait. Be patient. Once it’s open we are going to do two things. First, you’ll notice the check boxes next to the textures are all checked. Well, we don’t need all those textures, so let’s click the button Uncheck All (Skip this step to unpack the whole BSA!). Second, at the top of the list you will see the category called Name. Click this category and all of the files will be alphabetized into an order you skim through with ease. | |
Once the list is organized this way, we can scroll through and find our blanket texture.
Smarty Says: Scroll carefully! Going too fast can make it appear that some things are missing, scroll quickly to the section you want, then more slowly until you find what you’re looking for! Our blanket can be found under: textures\clutter\upperclass\blanket06.dds Remember from our lingo section, almost every texture requires a normal map and you will need one too. Usually the normal map is below the texture in the BSA list, so we are ALSO looking for: textures\clutter\upperclass\blanket06_n.dds When you find them, mark the check boxes next to each. |
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| Now we’re ready to unpack. Press the button that says Unpack. An unpack window will open, but BEFORE we unpack, we need to tell the Commander where we’d like that file to go. Next to the line that says Destination dir. You’ll see a little button with three dots on it like this ... click that. Another little window will open called Browse for Folder Indicate your desktop then click OK to set the desktop as your destination. | |
| Smarty Says: If you don’t have a folder on your desktop called “textures”, BSA Commander will create one automatically when you unpack. That’s just what you want, so don’t get confused!
Once the destination folder is chosen, you’re ready to click “Unpack” |
That’s it, you have successfully unpacked your texture and normal map, go ahead and close BSA Commander, but remember what you’ve learned, you’ll need it later!
Part 02: Retexturing in GIMP[edit | edit source]
Time to start up GIMP!
| Begin by clicking File, mouse down and click on Open the Open Image box will appear and you can navigate to find your unpacked texture. Start at desktop then go to textures > clutter > upperclass > and you’ll find your texture blanket06.dds. | |
| Double click on the file to open it and this is what you should be looking at now: | |
| This is the red and gold upper class blanket we’ve seen a dozen times over in the game. We’re going to change that in just a few steps. On the top of the image, click Colors the scroll down and click Hue-Saturation to open the Hue and Saturation tool. For those who don’t know, Hue is basically the color and Saturation is the depth level of that color. | |
| The first change to the texture we’ll make is to change the gold to silver. Start by clicking the little button next to the Y (yellow) on the color wheel because yellow is the base color for gold. Once you’ve clicked that button, drag the Saturation slider all the way to the left to -100. This de-saturates the gold color putting it onto grayscale or silver. | |
| Now we need to change the red to blue. To do this, click the button next to the R (red) on the color wheel. We don’t want to de-saturate the red we want to alter its hue to a new color. Grab the Hue slider and drag it to the left until it’s at -125. You now have a basic blue and silver texture and can click OK to close the Hue-Saturation box. | |
| This is good, but for the best results, let’s shine it up a bit. Click on Colors then Brightness - Contrast to open a new window. Move the contrast slider up to 5 to give a bit more definition to the new colors. Then click OK to close the Brightness-Contrast box. | |
| Now we’re ready to save, but before we can, we need to flatten the image. Vanilla textures from Oblivion have what’s called MipMaps. These are little layers of the texture. We want to make new ones for our new texture, but before we can, we need to get rid of the old ones from the original texture. Click Dialogs then scroll down to click on Layers to open the Layers box. | |
| Right-click on the Main Surface and choose Flatten Image to flatten the old mipmaps out, then go ahead and close the Layers box.
Now we’re ready to save the new texture. On the Image, click File then scroll down and click Save As |
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| The Save Image Window will open up. You need to NAME your new texture by typing a name in the name slot. I’ve called this texture aaTestBlueBlanket.dds You MUST add the .dds extension yourself by typing it in or GIMP will save it under a different and wrong extension!
When you click SAVE a Save as DDS window will open. There are two things you need to do in this window. First, choose the compression level. For a flattened texture, you need to choose DXT1. Second, you need to check the box Generate MipMaps. Click OK and the file will finish saving. |
Congratulations you have successfully retextured your first Oblivion texture and saved it!
Part 03: The Basic Normal Map[edit | edit source]
Normal maps can be very technical, and I won’t begin to confuse you by going too into depth in this lesson, but we’re going to cover how to create a basic and certainly passable normal map. Now, there’s a shortcut here that many beginners will want to make use of. When you retexture something like our blanket, where the color is changed but not the depth, you can simply use the vanilla normal map you unpacked with your texture. All you have to do is go into the textures\clutter\upperclass folder on your desktop, and rename blanket06_n.dds to match your new texture name.
You will be able to use this shortcut in the majority of your retextures. The exception would be things like signs, for example, where you change the name. The new name has a different depth than the old name, so you would need a new normal map, otherwise the old name will ghost under the new one! |
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| Since this is a tutorial and we have a new texture open yet, let’s go ahead and make a basic custom Normal Map. Start by clicking “Layer” then scroll down to Transparency and click “Add Alpha Channel” | |
| Next, you need to add a color to the Alpha Channel you just made. Click “Layer” again and scroll down to Transparency and click “Color to Alpha” | |
| A Color to Alpha box will open. Where it says “From:” you’ll see a white bar, click it and select black on the color picker window and click OK. | |
| Your texture will change to an alpha/transparent version of the blanket. Once you’ve reached that point, it’s time to transform it to a normal map. On the image, click “Filters” scroll down to map, and click normal map. | |
| The proper settings should already be in place, so all you need to do is verify your Filter is set at “4 sample” and click ok. Your texture will be transformed into a normal map for you! | |
| Time to Save!
Just like with the texture, click File then Save As |
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| In the Name slot type the name for your normal map. Remember it MUST be the same as the texture but with _n.dds at the end. I named mine aaTestBlueBlanket_n.dds. Click save and you will get the “Save as DDS” box. This time you need to choose a different compression level. Textures with alpha channels, like normal maps, need to be saved as DXT3 or DXT5. Click Generate Mipmaps and OK to finish saving your new normal map! |
That’s it! You’ve completed your texture and now your normal map, time to close up GIMP and re-open BSA Commander!
Part 04: Unpacking the Mesh![edit | edit source]
| When you have mastered BSA Commander you can of course, pull your textures then your meshes without closing BSA Commander, but to make your first unpack easier in the tutorial we just did textures. Before we can see our texture in game though, we need to unpack the mesh, so with BSA Copmmander re-opened, click open and navigate to your data folder to open the BSA file called “Oblivion-Meshes” | |
| Like before, you will click “Uncheck All” and the category “Name” to alphabetize the list. Then scroll through to find your mesh. The one we want is called: meshes\furniture\upperclass\upperdoublebed02.nif |
The rest of the steps are identical to Part 01 of this tutorial, refer back if you get lost. Click unpack, choose the desktop as the destination, and click unpack again to send the mesh to your desktop.
Part 05: Putting it All Together in NifSkope![edit | edit source]
| Okay Learner, we are more than halfway there! It’s time to apply the texture to the mesh using NifSkope, but before we can cue up NifSkope, we need to put the files in the right folders. Oblivion only reads folders that are in the Oblivion Data Folder. Let’s start by moving our mesh!
Open your Oblivion Data folder and double click on Meshes to open the meshes folder. Right click and choose New>Folder to make a new folder and give it your ID as its name (mine is “Darkrder”). Every mod you make will have its own folder inside this folder named for you! Inside your name folder you need to create another new folder for your mod. I called mine TutorialMod. |
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| Inside every mod folder is a bunch of folders, one for each of the common categories used in Oblivion such as Clutter, Furniture, Armor, Weapons, etc. | |
| Go to your desktop where you unpacked your mesh and rename the mesh to aaTestDoubleBed. Now copy and paste it into the new “furniture” folder you just made in your mod folder under:
Oblivion\Data\Meshes\YourName\YourModName\furniture\ |
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| Now that your mesh is in place, you need to do the same thing in the textures folder. In Oblivion\Data\Textures you will create a folder with your name, inside that a folder for your mod, and inside that a group of category folders. Copy/Paste your texture and normal map into the furniture category folder! | |
| With your textures and meshes in place, it’s time to cue up NifSkope!
With NifSkope open, click Load and navigate to the mesh you just stashed in your Data\Meshes\YourName\YourModName\furniture folder! Then click open to open the .nif. |
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| Your mesh will now appear in the window and in the Block List you will see a branch with a small arrow beside it called a NiNode. | |
| Click on the arrow to expand a tree of mesh properties.
The texture information is always located on a branch called NiTriStrips or NiTriShapes, This is called the “Texture Property”. As you can see, our bed has not one but 4 texture properties, so how do you know what to change? You can open each branch by clicking the arrows beside them, but the fastest way is to click the part of the model you want to change (in this case the blanket) and the NiTriStrip for that part will highlight in blue. |
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Click the arrow next to the highlighted branch to expand another tree. Then click the arrow next to the NiTexturingProperty to reveal a purple flower. Click the flower and navigate to the texture you stashed in Data\Textures\YourName\YourModName\furniture.
Smarty Says: You want to select the texture not the normal map. The game will detect the normal map automatically as long as they have the same name; you don’t need to select it. |
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| You will see the texture appear on the bed!
Now, you may have noticed that part of the model is still white, and you may be wondering “What about those textures? I don’t want a white bed!” Well, if a model has multiple textures (4 in this case) but you only change one, then there’s no need to unpack and add the other three textures. As long as you leave their texture property trees in tact the way they were when you unpacked the mesh, then the game will use those textures directly from the BSA without you having to do any extra work or clutter up your data folder with duplicate textures! So, all that’s left in NifSkope is to save! Click the SaveAs button. A Choose File box will open and the name of your mesh will already be on the File Name slot. Go ahead and leave it, then click save. A message box will pop up saying that file already exists and would you like to replace it, say yes. That way the old mesh without the texture is replaced by the one you just added the texture to. When that’s done, go ahead and close NifSkope! |
Almost there now! You have unpacked archives, retextured an image, made a basic normal map, and applied it to your model! Well done!
Part 06: Finishing Up in the CS![edit | edit source]
| Now that your model is in place and retextured with your snazzy new texture, it’s time to add it to a mod so you can see it in game! Now, this tutorial is NOT designed to teach you all you need to know about the CS, how it works, and why. All you will learn here are the basics of adding a furniture model. Other models follow the same basic steps, but with some obvious differences. There are plenty of tutorials out there to help you if you get confused with different objects and help is always available in the TESA Study Hall!
For this part of the tutorial, we will add the new bed model to the Wawnet Inn! To finish up, you need to cue up the CS! When it’s open, click File then Data so you can load your data into the CS: |
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| In the Data box, check the box next to Oblivion.esm only and click OK. | |
| Like with the BSA Commander, the Oblivion CS might take a few moments to load, be patient. When it is loaded, begin by clicking save to create a new .esp (mod) file. Under “File Name” name your mod “TutorialMod” and click Save. | |
| With your .esp saved, time to add the new model. In the Object Window under “World Objects” click “Furniture” to fill the list pane with furniture objects. In the list pane Right-click>New | |
| A furniture window will open. Next to ID you will type in a unique ID for your object. This is not the name you see in game, this is just its editor ID (the name it will have in the Construction set). Call it “aaTestDoubleBed”. Then where it says “Name” type Double Bed. This IS the name you will see in game when you get close to it. Click the button marked “Add NIF File” and navigate to your model in the data folder. Double Click on the model or click Open to add it to the window. Then Click OK. | |
| Now, when you click ok, the CS will issue you a warning that the furniture has now markers. Click the “Yes to All” button.
Now, go back to the list pane in the object window and find “aaTestDoubleBed” in the list. Double click to reopen the furniture window for your bed. You will see the bed model has appeared in the window in all its glory. Under “Active Markers” you can choose the marker(s) that allow the player and NPCs to sleep on the bed. Check the box next to Sleep 1 and click OK. |
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| Now you have added your model to the CS, click the disk icon on the header to save. Now there’s just one thing left, to add the bed to the game itself! In the “Cell View” window, the default worldspace is “Interiors”. That’s exactly what we want. Scroll down the list and find WawnetInnTavern and double click to open the interior in the Render Window. | |
Smarty Says: For more help navigating the Render Window, CLICK HERE for a list of keyboard and mouse controls under “Part Two: Let’s Get Modding!”! Click once on the house visible in the distance, but be very careful not to move it. Zoom in on the bed in the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. Click on the existing single bed and click delete to erase it. Now, drag “aaTestDoubleBed” from the list pane and drop it in the Render Window. Use ctrl+z to gently lower the bed flush with the ground. Once it’s in place, save again, and close the CS. |
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| You’re now ready to close the CS and go in game to see your bed! Run the Oblivion launcher and under “Data Files” check the box next to your new mod to load it when you start your game. Head to the Wawnet Inn near the Imperial City to see the new bed you retextured! |
ALL FINISHED! Congratulations! You have successfully completed the basic retexturing tutorial! You should be very proud of what you’ve accomplished and you now have the skills to expand and further explore texturing!