I am making a whole bunch of textures using photoshop, but whenever I apply them to an object in Nif Skope, it does not register. What kind of settings should I save it on to make it work?! (I have a DDS converter, but it isn't letting me put anything into the box to say "convert." It would be much easier if there was a way to get them to work straight from photoshop though...

Can you properly attach other .dds textures in NifSkope? Are the input and output formats for DDS Converter set properly?

You want "DXT1 RGB 4bpp | no alpha" for most textures, unless it has an alpha channel, which you'd use for transparency in the colour texture. For a normal map you want "DXT3 ARGB 8bpp | explicit alpha" for any normal map that contains an alpha channel, which you use for specular maps, or "no alpha" if you don't want a specular map. And there is a DDS export plugin for Photoshop.

Yes, I can apply other textures, like ones I had made previously not on photoshop. Umm...I dont know what the input/output settings are...I think that is the problem.

Just a couple of drop-down boxes on DDS Converter, just below and to the left of the "convert" button. It might help to make the Input Format PSD (I assume) and the Output Format DDS.

Actually, if you're saving in Photoshop, have you tried setting it to generate MIP maps for the image? I can't quite recall, but it might be necessary. I never really had any trouble saving things directly as .dds files in Photoshop Elements.

your dimensions for the textures must be powers of two :
such as 256,512,1024 and so on .So this is why I'll ask : what are the dimensions of your textures ?

All dimmensions are 240 by 240, I know that rule. It is just that I had textures that I had made using the DDS converter before tha worked, and now because i have photoshop which can directly export them I figured I'd use that. I found out that that did not work, and so i re-downloaded the DDS converter. So there could be two solutions to my problem:
(all of my textures regardless of if they work or not are in DDS format right now...I can switch them back though...none need any alpha channel)
1) Fix some sort of settings in Photoshop
2) Make it so that DAMN DDS CONVERTER WILL LET ME CHOOSE A FILE AN PRESS CONVERT!!! It wont let me select any files, even if it supported. I try to use the image file pull down list, and that still does not let me hit convert. It is still grayed out.

Now I have changed all of my textures in Photoshop to make them conintuous, and having done so, I have saved them all. I knew that doing this would mke them temporarily un-usable, but I really would like to to have them back soon !!!!HELP!!!

Here is a visual representation of my frustration....

just had to post one more time real quick to get to 100 posts...ignore this...

Well after some research...option 2 is out. Evidently:

DDS CONVERTER 2 IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH WINDOWS VISTA...THE CONVERT BUTTON DOES NOT ACTIVATE IF YOU ARE RUNNING VISTA.

I am checking to see if http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dds_utilities_legacy.html this program is going to work. I'll post to let everyone know...thanks for everyone's help. Who knew?!

Please...why ME? Well nothing seems to be working all that well, so I suppose that my only hope would be to go with option 1... DOES ANYONE KNOW WHY TEXTURES EXPORTED AS DDS FROM PHOTOSHOP WILL NOT APPEAR IN NIFSKOPE???

NifSkope will not show textures in exact powers of 2 that match. DDS Converter 2, even on WinXP, will not convert files that do not have what it thinks are correct powers of two. Also, anything that DDS Converter will convert, NifSkope will be able to display...which is not a 240 x 240 image.

Examples:

128 x 128
256 x 256
512 x 512
1024 x 1024
128 x 1024

There are other dimensions that will work in-game that still fit the power of 2 but are not recognized by NifSkope. These are: 1 --> 2 --> 4 --> 8 --> 16 --> 32 --> 64 --> 128 --> 256 --> 512 --> 1024 --> 2048 --> 4096

There are other tools that can export DDS format as well such as Paint.NET which supports it natively or GIMP which has plugins that can be added.

You might find this DDS Tools Listing helpful.

armageddon818, almost forgot, here is your official warning for the SPAM in a prior posting just to reach 100 in your post count. Please review the rules.

LHammonds

Oops, sorry about that. Thanks for the information and warning... won't do it again! I thought that it meant like all powers of two...

Well actually i had thought that it was power of 4... whatever, I must have made that up myself in my head. I'll try reformatting them all and then see if the dds converter will work...

Thanks again!

THANK YOU!!! I just finished reformatting all of the textures to 256 and that was in fact the issue. The last post is not the same, because i was checking to see if the solution actually worked. Sorry if the two posts seemed the same and i double posted

Please use the EDIT button if your post was the last one in the thread. This is still considered double-posting even if it isn't the exact same post (it was only a few minutes apart).

LHammonds