Texture Modding

NOTE: This page describes features that are (partially) implemented in GIT, but haven't been released yet.

Objects

NIFs

The below instructions are for NifSkope.

Normal mapping

Simply assign the texture to the BumpTexture slot of the NiTexturingProperty.

Parallax

Parallax mapping is similar to normal mapping, except that the alpha channel contains height information. To tell OpenMW that height information is available, make sure your normal map filename contains "_nh." (stands for normalHeight). Example: Tx_BM_snow_01_nh.dds

Native format

We plan to have native mesh/material formats in the future, but this is still in the planning stages.

Terrain

Specular mapping

The specular mask is stored in the alpha channel of the color texture. Note that contrary to what you'd expect, alpha=1 means no specular and alpha=0 means full specular. This is because Vanilla's default textures aren't supposed to have specular.

Normal mapping

Normal maps need to be named with an _n postfix. For example, for a color texture Tx_BM_snow_01.dds, OpenMW will look for a normal map called Tx_BM_snow_01_n.dds.

Parallax mapping

Parallax mapping is similar to normal mapping, except that the alpha channel contains height information. alpha = 1 -> low, alpha = 0 -> high. Also, the filename postfix you need to use becomes _nh (e.g. Tx_BM_snow_01_nh.dds) so that OpenMW knows that height information is available.