you're amazing 
So I've been trying to learn more about texturing in general, and I looked into the possibility of maybe doing some recolors of my own but I dont even know how to make a normal map or a spec map. Am I right in assuming that to change the base colors of an armor I would only have to edit the diffuse map? How would I go about, for instance, changing the color of the "lights" on the armor?
Aaah, that's quite the question. Bare with me, I'm going to give you everything which will be an overwhelming amount of information but it should ensure you have everything you need and understanding how everything ties in together is half the work (plus it's good for me to finally put it all down so I can reference to it later, I might process it into a blog post once done).
I've got a link for you that talks about materials in the unreal engine and how to create one. Any object that has textures associated with it will have a material that controls how they tie in together and what function they control. This guide is very useful as it shows you where all the different textures come from, how diverse their function can be and how they tie in together. I'd suggest you look through that information then read the comments I'm adding down here specific to Mass Effect and hopefully it should all fall together into a whole and start making sense.
http://waylon-art.co...erialBasics.htm
Diffuse
As you can see in the guide above, function can be linked to all the different channels on a texture. Any single texture has up to 4 channels, R (red), G (green), B (blue) and, A (alpha). In the link these are represented by the little coloured boxes on the side of the texture sample that are being attaching to nodes of the material.
The black box at the top represents RGB. When you use all three channels together you can create a texture that holds it's own colour information. For most diffuse textures in Mass Effect that's where that information goes. Diffuse textures are the easiest to understand for most people as you don't have to consider each channel's information on it's own. Most diffuse textures will also not have a functional alpha (or lack it entirely) and as such are most often a DXT1 without alpha to save on disk space (file format).
There are exceptions where colour is not put in the diffuse directly and the diffuse can be fit onto one channel rather than needing all three and that's where it can get confusing if you don't understand the basic principle behind materials.
When creating a custom diffuse map I use both brushes and images for textures.
Good to remember is to avoid images that have lighting effect in them. While some highlighting and shading is done in the diffuse, most of it is controlled through the specmap and when you put it in the diffuse where it wasn't originally, it'll look all kinds of wrong.
On the flipside, if your diffuse does have lighting or shading in places put it back in! If it's in there, it's in there for a reason! I get this is hard for people working with a mouse but lot of people don't do this and you end up with a flat diffuse that actually makes the whole look less realistic in my opinion. This is also the reason I would suggest to anyone looking to seriously start texture modding to buy a drawing tablet. It doesn't have to be big, a bamboo is absolutely fine, it'll make this kind of work TONS easier. A big chunk of work I do on a diffuse will be manually painted on, having a tablet is a must for me.
If you are looking to introduce more detailing on a flat surface with little to no texture, you can use layer style screen or overlay to more easily add structure to it without having to recreate the entire surface. Be careful that you don't use this too often, there's really only a handful of places I've been able to use it where it worked, instead of making the surface look like a bleeding mess through becoming too busy. It's not an auto-win button, but
when it works, it saves time.
Some tips:
- Use 3DS! Load in your mesh and your diffuse texture so you can see what you are doing without having to take your texture ingame.
- Group your materials together. Metal with metal, cloth with cloth. It'll make it easier to create the specmap later on.
- Use masks to add colour to elements. This makes it easier to create recolours for your retexture later.
- Put shading and highlighting on a separate layer and/or use masks for this as well.
- Shading and highlighting, put it back on the diffuse when you retexture!
- Learn how to use the pen tool, I can't express how important this tool is.
- Make sure your patterned areas are the same size on each element. Element wrap sizes differ so having them all the same size on the texture does not mean they are the same size on the model, quite the opposite.
- Take your time finding free stock (seamless) textures you can work with. You can make smart use of content aware fill in Photoshop (CS5+) to make a texture larger than it originally was. It's success depends on the textures structure, but be sure to look into it.
Find common diffuse maps below to get an idea of what one might look like:
Specmap
Aside from a diffuse an object will need a specular to control the way it reflects light. In the example above they are using the RGB on a new texture to create one. In Mass Effect, a specmap will often not only hold specular information, but many other functions to add more flexibility to the way an object responds and the amount of different properties directly controlled through this particular texture. Speculars are essentially greyscale and as such can fit onto any one channel of a texture which leaves the others open to have more divers and specific function attached to it controlling things like colour sheen, lights, etc. So, because the channels on a Specmap contain a specular on one channel but map function for a seemingly random number of other functions on the other channels, they always look rather strange as the information per coloured channel put together when normally viewing RGB looks really confusing. It only really starts to make sense when you view each channel separately and see that essentially any specmap can hold up to 4 unique textures, aka 4 unique greyscale 'maps' for function.
While Mass Effect will often use the same colour channels for the same kind of functions, they're not completely consistent about their channels usage and that is really the hardest part of working with a specmap and creating a custom one. Finding out what function they've attached to each individual channel through the material itself and how to manipulate them to get the effect you desire. It's good to remember that, because any channel information is greyscale knowing that white is positive and black is negative, making a channel completely white will flood it's particular function across the surface the texture maps, alternately make the channel black to cancel out the effect it controls. It can be an effective way of finding out what any one channel effectively controls.
When creating a custom specmap I usually take a 'best guess' as to which of the three channels functions as the specular and create it from my diffuse by changing the contrast/brightness of certain materials per group and making them as bright as I want them to be reflective. Mostly cloth elements will be darker than metal, so if you have white coloured cloth, you'd have to darken the cloth for use on the specmap.
It helps if you've created a custom diffuse and grouped retextured elements by material.
For the rest of the layers: sometimes you can extrapolate function from the 'old' specmap in that slot, sometimes you'll have to test by flooding that channel (for instance putting one particular piece of the wrap on that channel and taking it in-game to see what kind of overlay effect it triggered.
Putting all these different functions in channels of the same texture is essentially a file size consideration. A texture with RGB and a functional alpha will be a DXT5 with interpolated alpha. Because this holds information for what would otherwise be 4 unique RGB channels (thus textures) and a DXT5 is about twice the size of a DXT1, they are saving half the disk space (roughly put) while gaining flexibility.
Find common specmaps below to get an idea of what one might look like:
Normal map
Normal Maps provide 3D detailing to an object. They are generated from the original high poly count 3D model of the mesh in question.
As such, it's useful when creating a new normal map to work off the base of the original. Usually I upscale the original, depending on the object about half the size of the diffuse/spec unless it maps a full-body surface in which case I sometimes end up going up to 4096 on the diffuse and normal map alike. I then use the diffuse and
Nvidia's normal map filter for Photoshop to generate a normal map.
I only tend to replace the original normal map in places where I changed the textures to such an extend as it being unavoidable. All other times I will smooth out the jagged edges on the original and overlay detailing generated with the Nvidia normal map
preserving the original normal map.
ME3's normal maps are V8U8's. I save my edited normal maps as a BMP in Photoshop, then use the Direct X texture tool to convert to V8U8 and generate MIPs.
Some tips:
- Black elements are automatically indented and white elements extruded. If you are trying to generate a map for a metal surface with white scratches, on default settings the filter will extrude them instead of indent. Flip the Z axis if you want to reverse this. You can cut and paste bit together with the axis inverted or normal depending on what kind of material surface you are dealing with.
- You can run the filter several times on different hardness (5-60) settings, then overlay each layer on a percentage to get a nice and fluid normal map with more depth.
- If your normal map becomes too pitted and irregular due to the diffuse detailing, consider running a gaussian blur over the diffuse before you run the filter.
Find common normal maps below to get an idea of what one might look like:
Tint map
Tintmaps are used to add colour to a 3D model with a greyscale diffuse. They function as a colour overlay on-top of the diffuse greyscale information (much like a colour overlay layer works in Photoshop) preserving all detail on the diffuse itself and making it possible to have multiple colours of an item without needing a diffuse for every variant. It preserves space.
In essence they are function maps, with information either positive (white) or negative (black).
Tintmap channels all mask function dictated by the material. As an example, below is a tintmap from ME2/3:
You can see how the RGB data together looks and how the channels separately look, if an alpha is present it would hold the same kind of black/white data as on the R/G/B, masking parts of the texture surface for material control. You can't manipulate the function each channel maps from the texture, this is determined by the material itself.
Stripe map
Stripemaps are used to add pattern-colour to a 3D model with a greyscale diffuse and tintmap. They function as a colour overlay on-top of the diffuse greyscale information[/size][/font][/color]
, much like the tintmap.
Maranda's armor where the pattern selection could be the hex or plain, where you could change the color of the leather. How cool would that be!
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