Difference between revisions of "Blender/Texturing From A UV Map"

This part is important.  It doesn’t matter as much what layer you have on top in the GIMP right now, as long as they’re both visible.  It DOES matter that in the layers dialogue you select your new layer, NOT the one with the UV map in it:

If you click on the mesh itself in the viewing window over in NifSkope, you may see something interesting: a green pattern like a net covers the mesh.  This green grid is your best friend, because it is exactly the same as the one you’re looking at in the texture, just wrapped around your mesh instead of laid flat.

Now, if you like, you can draw a rough outline in your new layer, tracing the boundaries of your UV map so you know where the texture should go and where it’s a waste of your time to draw.  I don’t generally bother, but if you do you can use GIMP’s versatile paintbrush (p key) or pencil (n key) to do that.   

Remember, you may have to do a lot of layer shuffling and moving up and down as you texture.  For this reason, it's good to save as an .xcf or .psd format.  This won't show up in NifSkope, but it will save your layers.  If you save a .dds with layers, close it, and reopen it, you will lose all but the top layer.  You can check your progress in NifSkope by sometimes exporting a .dds.