At worst, one of the two will crawl/crash. There's little harm in trying though, as long as you've saved. You'll need to be able to run both GIMP and Skryim together of course so if you've no way to switch applications or your computer isn't powerful enough, this method won't be possible. So with that in mind, here is the fastest way to check, edit, re-export and re-check your textures without having to waste time closing and reopening Skyrim (as loading another save will not reload textures). If you're like me, you'll probably be making many edits to your textures and checking them in-game. If you have a BLOCKY face that you can't fix, opening the file without loading mipmaps, and exporting the file with new mipmaps (and without compression) might be the cure. *Exporting Normal Maps without compression is essential! Because of the wide range of colours, GIMP (and Photoshop) will ruin their quality (most noticeably in the mipmaps) if you use ANY compression.
![how to install dds plugin for gimp 2.8 how to install dds plugin for gimp 2.8](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mE6mbsQff8k/mqdefault.jpg)
You can do this by right clicking on any layer, clicking "Merge Visible Layers", and then selecting "Clip to Image".Īdvanced Options: If you chose to use compression, then expand this section and tick the "Use perceptual error metric" box to improve the compression quality slightly. But you NEED to have combined all your layers first. Mipmaps: If you want to have Mipmaps (you can go without them if you have lots of VRAM), select "Generate mipmaps" on the exporting window. But for high quality things like faces and any *Normal Maps, I suggest that you choose "None" for a nearly lossless file. As it will reduce the filesize of the texture, but keep the alpha channel (transparency) for various textures that might need it, like fur and hair. Then decide what quality you'd like.Ĭompression: It's best to choose "BC3 / DXT5" compression.
#How to install dds plugin for gimp 2.8 skin
When exporting, replace the original file unless you want to save it somewhere else (like if you opened a vanilla race skin texture to edit it for a custom race). Their filenames should be the same as the diffuse maps, but usually have "_msn" at the end.Įxporting:Exporting will let you save your work as an image file. I don't suggest editing these in GIMP unless you're doing small fixes (like removing details/mistakes). From this map, the engine can then determine how the in-game light sources affect the object based on what coloured parts are exposed. This texture is created by the 3D model being lit from different angles by a certain colour on each axis.
![how to install dds plugin for gimp 2.8 how to install dds plugin for gimp 2.8](https://www.gimp.org/screenshots/1280x800-fresh-start.jpg)
This will be the kind of texture you edit most often. Without these, almost everything would be invisible. They're the colours that coat every "thing" in Skyrim.