Fallout 4 retextures [WIP & REL]
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Heya, while waiting for Fallout 4 mod tools to come out, I've started redoing textures for the weapons I feel could use a little bit of touching up. The double barrel shotgun's barrel textures looked rather blurry in-game so that was kind of the inspiration behind starting this little project, as well as accustoming myself to their shaders.
First up the double-barrel shotgun, which I finished & released tonight. More to follow
http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2211/
First up the double-barrel shotgun, which I finished & released tonight. More to follow
http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2211/
Replies
Hey can you tell what textures new Fallout uses, or even better show the original flats.
Most things have albedo, spec (Stored in the red channel of the _s.dds), gloss (stored in the green channel of the _s.dds) and BC5/ATI 3dc normal maps.
Good seeing a proper texture mod, not just upp-ressed, sharpen and normal map filter
How much do you know about the differences from F3 when it comes to the textures?
In the unpacking tool readme I used, it mentioned using a new dds format.
I only recolored my pip-boy while messing with it so far.
@Millenia this looks amazing, Is it possible to see your process on how you went about this.
Looks like a nice upgrade, especially the metal. Nice work.
Any source on the information about the spec/gloss? I know some amount of the texture extraction from the ba2's was fudged to get it working ASAP and may not be completely correct. I thought that the spec/gloss (_s) textures are 3Dc/ATI2/BC5, same as the normal maps. Or is that only a temporary thing as a part of the fudging I mentioned?
3Dc/ATI2/BC5 is two channel and does not result in significant quality loss like DXT1 does. With DXT1 you get ugly compression artifacts and an extra wasted channel, but the file will be half the size. I know that AMD Compress has an option to compress as BC7 with RGB or RGBA. Though there is no option for two channel BC7. I doubt there would be a very large quality gain over 3Dc/ATI2/BC5 and BC7 would likely result in a larger file size.
I thought it went red channel for gloss and green channel for spec. I haven't done anything more than tinkering with the F4 textures atm. Am i wrong on that?
Conversion reverses them, my textures match marmoset pretty closely with r spec & g gloss where as the other way around I get flat glossiness and crazy busy spec. I save just as DXT1 as the resolution is big enough to mask the artifacts. Any format should do, really.
Started on combat shotgun, I do these all in dDo utilising 2.0's 3d painting abilities heavily. Used to blend/mask photos by hand but this gives as good results with more control.
As for whether to use DXT1 or 3Dc/ATI2/BC5, I think Bethesda may have downscaled textures and used 3Dc/ATI2/BC5 rather than higher resolutions and using DXT1 because the file size is smaller (half) and there are potentially less compression artifacts. DXT1 is likely fine for spec/gloss maps, but as you probably already know DXT compression can absolutely ruin a normal map.
EDIT: To clarify a few things -- the F4 engine/renderer treats 3Dc, ATI2, and BC5 dds textures the same, that is that it assumes the red and green channels are switched (includes normal maps red=Y green =X). To confuse things, depending on what you use to compress your textures, how they are compressed will change.
AMD Compress:
BC5 - compressed texture red and green channels do not match source texture (switched)
ATI2N_XY - compressed texture red and green channels do not match source texture (switched)
ATI2N - compressed texture red and green channels match source texture
Photoshop Nvidia dds plugin:
3Dc - compressed texture red and green channels match source texture
GIMP dds plugin:
BC5 / ATI2 (3Dc) - compressed texture red and green channels match source texture
What this means for anyone editing vanilla F4 textures is that you may need to pay close attention to the image channels of both the normal and spec/gloss maps, and the compression type.
EDIT2: I was wrong about the channel swap. In reality, BC5 compression stores the red and green channel data in a different order (red then green), where as ATI2/3Dc (it's predecessor) did the opposite by default (optional alternate XY swizzle). Tools originally designed with ATI2 in mind may not handle BC5 textures properly or at all depending on the texture's file header and fourCC support of the tool. The Nvidia PS DDS plugin, which I was using to open and view Fallout 4 textures is one of these such tools. Basically, it incorrectly swaps the RG channels when opening the Fallout 4 _n and _s textures.
See this google doc for a breakdown of BC5/ATI2/3Dc support in various tools
And when you say "as well as accustoming myself to their shaders."
Do you mean actually modifying the shaders or how they work with the textures?
Since I am have been doing some textures for a prop and having a hard time getting it to look like metal(reflections).
Yeah, would be nice to have the metallic system in there, however I will try and darken my diffuse and see if I get a more metallic look.
B.A.E to extract model & texture files
Noesis to convert .nif to .obj (remember to tick "Flip UV" every single time you export a mesh)
AMD Compressonator to convert the normal map from BC5 to a standard format
After you convert the normal map the channel order will be reversed so you will have to swap the red & green channels around. You will also want to remember to tick "Flip Y" in Quixel Suite if you use dDo to work on the textures, as it expect y+ by default whilst the game uses y-.
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Almost done with this bad boy, just finishing up the attachments so I can release it.
Released it finally.
http://millenia3d.net/tb2/FO4CombatShotgun/ 4 marmoset viewer
(PS: need to fix that typo in the markings, stupid keyboard causes double strokes on some keys if the key's not fully bottomed out >__>)
Any chance you got a fast workflow for painter<->ingame test ? All the loading/waiting time to load/test/editing/retest is killing me.
And if you could tell how you work in ddo ? I mean, you start with a metalness PBR (albedoM/metal/rough) or a specular PBR (albedo/spec/gloss) workflow ? And how you export ?
Sorry for the question, but the result in FO4 are really hard to understand.