Creating a mask

[shady tradesman]

I was wondering if there was a way to create a normal map that was completely see-through when viewed in game? If anyone could help that'd rock.

[The Old Ye Bard]

It's called the Alpha Channel

[shady tradesman]

But that's a specular map, right?

[The Old Ye Bard]

It's not a seperate map.

[shady tradesman]

It's odd. When I create an alpha channel for a normal map and set it to all white or all black, the texture becomes really shiney or really dull.

[The Old Ye Bard]

I don't think your talking about the alpha channel, also you have to enable the alpha channel in NifScope. So your probably talking about the _n map, which is completly differnt.

[shady tradesman]

Really, here's my dilemma.

The game is loading two normal maps (ends with _n) on one face of an NPC. The map on top, I don't want there. However, since it is programmed into oblivion already and is featured in the BSA's, the only way I can see making it go away is either with archiveinvalidation texts, but that's confusing for some users, or making the normal map on top cease to be visable.

[noremorse]

The diffuse map (the texture you see) must have an alpha channel that is black. This makes it invisible. The normal map must also have an alpha channel, but this works as a specular map. Both of the files need to be saved as DXT3 (explicit maps).

Now, the model, assuming it's the head or face mesh, must have the transparency option enabled within the mesh. If it's not, then the maps' transparency will have no effect on the model. You should be able to open the mesh up with NifSkope and add that option in there.

[shady tradesman]

No you see, there's four textres in this problem.

There's the base texture, the base texture normal map, the age texture, and the age texture normal map.

The age texture normal map is completely obscuring the base texture normal map, and I just want to get rid of it. However, there is seemingly no way to actually do this since it is already in the BSA besides archive invalidatoin. I'd love it if I could make the age texture normal map just invisable so that the base texture normal map could show through on top of it.

[noremorse]

Oh, I see. I've never actually edited a face mesh before, but what would stop you from creating an all new face/head mesh outside of the bsa and using it on a new race? That should allow you to edit all you want.