This will probably evolve into a tutorial. I just toyed around with the feature today for about 30 minutes and was almost late for work!!
Basically you right click the mesh part in the tree view, select UV Edit, and a control pops up that shows you the targa file with a wiremap overlaid on it. You can zoom and drag this view the same was you do with a nif in the preview section (mouse wheel is for zoom, hold wheel to drag) This wiremap can be changed.. you can either select a specific vertex point and move it (watch the preview window as the skin on the mesh morphs into place.. amazing) or you can click and drag to draw a selection box around a group of points and move them all at once (useful if you want to map the nif to a completely different area of the skin file)
Take tommyboy's verstile meshes, for instance. You have a seperate tga file for the body and for the hair, and the weapons. If you open the main tga file, 'male_basic' in the image editor, you can place the smaller bits onto this image file, in inconspicuous locations (if they fit) and re-save it. You can put the guns in the space around the body, for instance. Then in NifSkope, map all those bits to the main tga file, by changing the name of their texture to 'male_basic' or whatever... and edit the UV Map for those bits, selecting the whole wireframe, and positioning it to the new location where you put it in the image editor.
This can cut down on file size a great deal, and curb that problem of the pink glow that happens when the image cache gets filled.
One thing i noticed and didn't have a chance to look into in detail. I re-mapped a basic file, and it worked in CTool. But the refl file hadn't changed... could it be that you need to re-generate a refl file in the mesh?
I didn't explain it that well.. I could see in CTool that the changes I made to the base skin were evident, but the refl file was still obeying the old uv cooridinates... So there was a bit of reflection happening where it shouldn't
I totally changed topics without warning!! :thumbup:
Hey Rev,
Got a question... I have on my harddrive here an old unfinished mesh that Valander did a while back that was called Manbot2k3 which I believe was based on one of his Transformers meshes. Anyway, I think there was never a standard skin created for it - or I never ran across it before. Is there anyway to use the UV Map editing to make a new TGA skin file?
- CrimsonQuill
You can generate a wiremap easily in NifSkope. Each editable mesh gets its own wiremap, regardless of what image file it is looking to for its texture
Go to an editable mesh line in the tree view, Right Click> Texture >Export Template
And you can save a wiremap file, you choose the resolution.
Quote from: Revenant on June 14, 2007, 05:46:07 PM
I didn't explain it that well.. I could see in CTool that the changes I made to the base skin were evident, but the refl file was still obeying the old uv cooridinates... So there was a bit of reflection happening where it shouldn't
A typical FF mesh has three UVmaps (0,1 and 2) for base, gloss and glow textures, even if (as is usually the case) they are the same.
That explains it, thanks Symon! I'll have to play around with the other UV maps and see if I can copy my modified one over them
You can always change the nif so that UVmap 0 is used by the gloss and glow textures as well. I've never seen a nif from 3dsmax do this, as it doesn't know that the UVmaps are the same but I've done it (one of my tutorials covers it, the adding gloss/glow one). You had to do it that way with the older versions of NifSkope.
Okay guys...This may be a dumb question, but...I made some object meshes for my mod, but they have no wiremaps...Can I create wiremaps from scratch using Skope? Keep in mind, I'm terrible at these technical things.
Dana
Quote from: cmdrkoenig67 on July 05, 2007, 11:42:26 AM
Okay guys...This may be a dumb question, but...I made some object meshes for my mod, but they have no wiremaps...Can I create wiremaps from scratch using Skope? Keep in mind, I'm terrible at these technical things.
Dana
Techincally, it's possible, but it is *very* hard to make a easily skinnable wiremap using nifskope if the mesh wasn't already UV mapped.
Quote from: Alphanaut on July 05, 2007, 01:18:54 PM
Quote from: cmdrkoenig67 on July 05, 2007, 11:42:26 AM
Okay guys...This may be a dumb question, but...I made some object meshes for my mod, but they have no wiremaps...Can I create wiremaps from scratch using Skope? Keep in mind, I'm terrible at these technical things.
Dana
Techincally, it's possible, but it is *very* hard to make a easily skinnable wiremap using nifskope if the mesh wasn't already UV mapped.
Thank you, Alpha...A kind soul (dressed in purple, formal attire) has offered to create wiremaps for me.
Dana