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\" Oblivion internally adds "Oblivion\data\" and a leading Backslash would result in the illegal filename "Oblivion\data\\textures\texture.dds"

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

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

Invisible Body Parts (Missing Normal Map)

A quite common problem with retexturing is the disappearance of bodyparts, especially when you use an 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

Some textures (armor for example) require a glow map. A glow map is a texture that corresponds with the amount of "shininess" an object shows when struck by light at different angles. These work in retexturing much the same way as the normal map. The glow map simply has _g behind the filename. So you might need 3 files:

helmet.dds (texture) helmet_n.dds (normal map) helmet_g.dds (glow map)

When editing a currently existing texture, one can use the original normal and glow maps and copy them to work for the new texture. If you are retexturing silver armor and rename your new armor silverNEW.dds, then you should copy the normal and glow maps from the silver textures and rename them silverNEW_n.dds and silverNEW_g.dds. Although the armor will look fine in the editor without the glow map, it is good to have in-game if you want your armors to glow so that your mod looks more professional.

Black Texture

Texture appears black in game and abnormal behaviour in inventory window.

If you've used Nifskope to do your texturing work this irksome bug sometimes crops up. The file path gets unduly truncated (sometimes even simply to x.dds) or / gets switched for \ It'll still display perfectly well in the Nifskope render window, but the Oblivion engine requires more clarity in designating file path.

To solve this, go back into Nifskope and find the purple flower symbol in the block list (if you used Nifskope to texture in the first place presumably you know it).Double click the name next to the icon and write in longhand the full path to your texture (including at the end of course your texture's name), eg: C:Program Files\Oblivion\Data\textures\mytexture.dds

That's fine when your just working on the texture for yourself. But what about when you want to release your mod? The above filepath would be no use to someone who had their Oblivion folder within a Betheseda Softworks folder for instance. Therefore, prior to release you'll need to make another change to the texture path in Nifskope this time reducing it to:

textures\[any subfolders]\.dds

Now the texture won't appear in the Nifskope render window (which is why those using Nifskope as an aid to drawing textures will need the step above) but the texture will appear correctly in game and - crucially - will do so for everyone else who has the correct meshes and textures folders within their Oblivion\Data directory.