Topic: Recoloring an FX

[Jimaras8]

Hello, everyone. I wanted to know if it's possible to recolor an FX. I'm trying to take Man'o War's electric arc and paint it yelloow so i can create Miles Morales venom blast. I have gimp installed but i havent done this before so if you could walk me through this i would be grateful.

I assume i will have to start with the textures, right?

[Night Dragon]

 It has been so long since I even messed with FXs, that I have no idea. But I dug this up and it may be of some help.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080509141831/http://www.fxforce.com/Tutorials.html

 Hope that provides some form of help.

[daglob]

I haven't played with Gimp much, but it does work with layers. You can add a layer above the background (like a clear sheet of plastic), then fill it with the color you want it to be, and change the blend modes 'til it looks like you want. Where on the menus the blend modes are located, I can't tell you. You should be able to take the background layer and make it grayscale, but don't do that unless you can't get what you want with the original color.

Oh, yeah, flatten the image before you save, and never do this kind of thing on your original texture.

Anybody see something I missed?

[Jimaras8]

TBH guys i only gimp when i need to convert dds. I'm pretty much in the dark about the actual coloring capabilities. What do you use if you want to recolor an FX?

[detourne_me]

Another option, if you are unsure of doing any image editing, is renaming the texture file associated with the FX.
You could do this using Nifskope.
There are many texture files that are just recolors, like streak_blue.dds or streak_green.dds.  perhaps there already is a yellow texture file, and you could just rename the linked texture file in the core.nif

[Jimaras8]

That sounds like a simpler idea and a quicker fix for the time being. Two questions:

1. I cant seem to be able to find the electric_arc texture files in the library. How are they called?
2. Where exactly in the core.nif is the name of the texture file linked?

[detourne_me]

The texture files for built-in FX are 8n the art.ff file. It's basically a zip file, so you can extract all of the textures with 7zip or a similar program.

An FX core.nif is really similar to a character.nif file. So open it up in nifskope and click on the piece you want to looks at. You'll get information about the editable mesh in the Block List window, so just go down through the tree until you see the NiTexturing Property (i think that's what it's called).

[Jimaras8]

I found the texture for the electric_arc and its called spark_blue_01.tga. I also found a spark_yellow_01.tga on the MA folder. So now all i need to do is go to the end.nif of the fx and just replace spark_blue_01.tga with spark_yellow_01.tga? That should do it?

[Jimaras8]

So i changed the sparkles but i couldnt change the main electric circle which is the thing i want to turn yellow the most. I think its called Dummy_Scale. I couldnt find any NifTexturingProperty on that branch.

[detourne_me]

i think it's called electric_bolt.dds under Dummy_SwitchOff>Cylinder05,  you could try renaming it to spark_long_yellow.dds if you didn't want to mess with any recolouring.

[Jimaras8]

Is it the block details? I see Dummy_SwitchOff and Cylinder05 but under Cylinder05 there are only the zMode10 and the Editable Mesh. I cant seem to find a elctric_bolt.dds

[Jimaras8]

So, in case this one doesnt work what is in theory the easiest way to recolor an fx? Which program would you guys suggest for someone who has never done it before?