Water puddles appear in-game after modifying FLVER textures | ?ServerName? | Page 1

vapid ivy Jun 30, 2024, 1:07 AM

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Hello. I'm making a mod where I'm attempting to repair Leyndell in Elden Ring, and I've made quite a bit of progress. I've encountered a strange issue with materials, however. I want to remove all of the piles of ash across the city, flattening the spot if needed, and replacing the texture with whatever material the ash would have been covering. I'm also repairing any damaged structures, but that seems irrelevant to the current issue.

This has been done so far by opening the FLVER in FLVER Editor, and reassigning the texture paths as shown in the third image. You can see from the fourth image how it was configured originally, with AET220_000 being ash, AET220_214 being stone bricks, AET220_304 being plant matter, and AET220_968 being the water.

However, doing this seems to cover the area in water puddles, but only in the areas where ash and plants have been replaced. Interestingly, the shape of the water puddles will form a pattern on large enough surfaces. Looking closely, it seems that the water takes the original shape of the plant matter layer, which then seems to be randomized, or at least changed to a layer I can't identify. I don't understand why all this might be happening, as I leave the water path untouched and do not modify the masking map. I have both the original versions of each FLVER as well as my modified versions, should you need to see them.

If you know what might be causing this, please let me know. I can't keep asking for aid in #models-and-textures repeatedly, so I made this thread to look into the issue. Thank you for reading and for any help you can give, and please don't hesitate if you have any questions.

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...Are you asking for a screenshot of the mod file directory?

vapid ivy Jun 30, 2024, 5:38 PM

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.

vapid ivy Jul 2, 2024, 7:00 AM

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Kind of sucks all these messages got sent. Makes people think this actually got discussed. Wish I could delete them all...

vapid ivy Jul 10, 2024, 3:59 PM

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I asked a modeling expert on this matter and he suggested the color map mask might actually be an "ID Map". I didn't really understand it, but the gist is that channels that aren't being used for coloring can have number stored inside to affect things like metallicness and such? I think? I'm not nearly as good at the stuff as he is so I didn't catch everything.

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📎 AET220_995_3m_rgb.dds

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Looks like this btw

stiff gyro Jul 10, 2024, 6:29 PM

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Maybe I'm looking at this wrong but could it be that the UVs for the path part are mapped to those water textures somehow? Have you imported this model in blender and checked the textures of the vertices that are where that weird texture is?

vapid ivy Jul 10, 2024, 10:07 PM

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stiff gyro Maybe I'm looking at this wrong but could it be that the UVs for the path part a...

No that's definitely a possibility. I've looked at vertex colors and the masks, but I only glanced at the UVs. I'll take a deeper look and report back with what I find.

vapid ivy Jul 10, 2024, 11:37 PM

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There's only one texture assigned to the UVs in the model, and it's the brick texture.

stiff gyro Jul 11, 2024, 4:16 AM

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Are these water puddles maybe from a completely different map piece/object as they appear in game?

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like if you move the asset position a bit do the water puddles follow?

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 4:50 AM

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stiff gyro like if you move the asset position a bit do the water puddles follow?

They do, actually. Moving the mesh moves the puddles.

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...Just to be safe though, I'm going to double check lol

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Better safe than sorry.

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 5:14 AM

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Okay yep- I remembered correctly.

stiff gyro Jul 11, 2024, 5:16 AM

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Hmm, well I'm also noticing in your first screenshot the walls look kinda fucked so maybe somehting is not normally

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If the water textures aren't a different object and not one of the meshes in the model, I have no idea what technique it's using

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 5:17 AM

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Yeah, that's a completely seperate model, but I noticed that too.

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The texture is listed in FLVER Editor in the materials section, but other than that I got nothing

stiff gyro Jul 11, 2024, 5:17 AM

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how did you remove the ash mesh?

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 5:19 AM

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Turns out the ground was just one plane- the ash pile is just a differently textured section raised up. Because I couldn't delete it, I flattened the mesh and swapped the ash texture for the brick one.

stiff gyro Jul 11, 2024, 5:19 AM

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Oh I see

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well then if it is a different mesh, it's likely using the wrong texture somehow

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or are these maybe just lightmaps

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 5:21 AM

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I've never touched lightmaps

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But uh, if you change the 995 mask listed in FLVER Editor then the puddles are affected

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Just not fully removed

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I just want the puddles to be as they were on the vanilla model, tbh

stiff gyro Jul 11, 2024, 5:24 AM

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sorry, I'm too baby to understand how they built this model, but I think if you wanted to fix the model to remove the ash the proper way, you'd delete the ash mesh, then rebuild the faces between the holes in the pathway mesh

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 5:25 AM

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There is no ash mesh

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The ash and the path are the same mesh- all one connected plane

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It's just textured to look seperated.

stiff gyro Jul 11, 2024, 5:26 AM

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Hmm so it has 2 UV channels then and probably uses the vertex colro alpha to blend the textures if it's like previous game's flvers

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 5:27 AM

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That lines up with what I've seen.

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Weird thing is that when I check the vertex colors, only the red and alpha are used

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The model is usually entirely red, with patches of alpha on some of them.

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These don't line up with the puddles though...

stiff gyro Jul 11, 2024, 5:28 AM

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That probably means the material is using the red vertex color channel for somehting that isn't actually vertex shading

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 5:29 AM

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The partially red areas in between the full red and full alpha get rendered as wet ground- not a puddle, but the wet material that one would leave behind

stiff gyro Jul 11, 2024, 5:29 AM

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You say the alpha channel doesn't line up with where the textures are different?

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 5:29 AM

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Full Alpha and Full Red are identical yeah

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It's only the transition between the two that's different

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It's so weird

stiff gyro Jul 11, 2024, 5:31 AM

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Maybe it's like a height thing somehow, sorry I am not a material expert so now I'm just guessing

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 5:31 AM

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Haha, it's okay. I would bug Dropoff about it but he always seems so busy

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I don't want to bother him

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But yeah, removing the red channel removes the puddles.

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Mostly

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Removing the green channel removes the wet marks on the bricks (same shape as the puddles)

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Removing the blue channel... I literally have no clue if it even changes something

stiff gyro Jul 11, 2024, 5:33 AM

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I wonder if you just swap the material to one that is used on different stone models that don't have weird stuff like puddles or ash piles, it'll just work itself out?

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 5:34 AM

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Maybe? I can try to test that tomorrow

stiff gyro Jul 11, 2024, 5:34 AM

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maybe that's not possible with ER flvers, I know they work different then older games

vapid ivy Jul 11, 2024, 5:34 AM

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I only really know how to swap out textures in FLVER Editor though, so it'll take some experimenting

#Water puddles appear in-game after modifying FLVER textures