Textures with Paint.NET
UPDATE: 9/11/2020
There is a bug with sRGB color space on .dds files that will cause colors to appear incorrectly when opening files and saving files that have sRGB color space.
I got the bug fixed, but you need to update Paint.NET in the settings.
If you downloaded Paint.NET after August 4th 2020, you already have the update and can ignore this.
UPDATE: 7/7/2020 - Added Modify Channels plugin and clarified some wording. I will be cleaning up this article a bit more when I have time.
Guide by NSACloud2#5771
This is a general guide to textures in Monster Hunter World using Paint.NET.
Paint.NET is a image editor similar to Photoshop and GIMP. It has no relation to MS Paint. It is free and has native support for editing .dds files which is needed for editing or saving new textures. You can download it here.
With some plugins, Paint.NET is just as capable an editor as Photoshop. There are many other useful plugins but these are the ones I use the most.
This pack adds many features that are useful for texturing.
This allows you to import greyscale textures to be used as an alpha mask. The page says the plugin is out of date, you can ignore that, it still works fine.
This plugin allows you to generate normal maps from an existing texture, very useful if you don't have a normal map or if your normal map is in a non standard format.
This plugin allows you to manipulate color channels. Can be used to swap color channel assignments.
Start by opening your texture. You can do this by going to File > Open, or by dragging the file onto the editor. If you want to edit existing .tex files, you must convert them into .dds files first. See here for info.
Once you have your texture into the editor, the general image editing tools can be found in the top left and are fairly self explanatory.
Remember that all textures must be a power of two (512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x1024, etc.) You can resize images by going to Image > Resize.
There are no special steps required for the color map texture. When you are done making changes, click File > Save As and change the filetype to "Direct Draw Surface (DDS) (.dds)". After you hit save, a window with settings will pop up.
Change the type to "BC1 (Linear, DXT1)". If your texture has transparency, change the type to "BC7 (Linear, DX 11+)". Make sure "Generate Mip Maps" is checked. Once you hit OK, your file is saved and you can convert it back into a .tex file using Jodo's Tex Converter.
For the normal map texture, make sure that it is in the standard format.
If it does not look like the image on the bottom, use Normal Map Plus to generate a normal map. You can access Normal Map Plus by going to Effects > Stylise > Normal Map Plus. You can change the settings around but the default settings are usually good enough.
After you have a standard normal map, hit Save As and change the type to "BC5 (Linear, Unsigned)". This removes the blue channel and converts it into a format usable by Monster Hunter. Convert it back into a .tex file using Jodo's Tex Converter.
An RMT consists of three color channels that control aspects of how a material is rendered.
Red controls roughness. The higher the value, the less glossy the material will appear. A red RGB value of 30 will be very glossy, while a value of 230 will have almost no gloss.
Green controls metalness. This is how reflective the material will look. The higher the value, the more reflective the material will be. A green RGB value of 30 will not be very reflective, while a value of 230 will be very reflective.
Blue controls transparency and subsurface scattering. It is not used often so I wont get into it.
Paint.NET by default does not have support for editing specific color channels, but it is easy to split each color channel into it's own layer for individual editing.
To do this, create two duplicates of the layer your texture is on. Double click on each of the layers and rename them to Red, Green and Blue. Change the Blend mode for each of them from "Normal" to "Additive".
For each of the layers, go to Adjustments > Curves. Change Transfer Map to "RGB". Click "Reset", then uncheck the box for the color that you want on its own. Click on the control point in the top right corner and drag it to the bottom right corner.
This removes the color channels of the other two color channels that were selected. See screenshot for reference.
Once you have a layer for each color channel, you should save the file as a .pdn, so you can go back to it if you make a mistake.
You can now edit each color channel individually.
This process will vary depending on the textures that you have. If you have a black and white specular map, you can use it a base for an RMT.
Go to Adjustments > Curves and drag the green and blue channels all the way down. This will get you an approximated roughness map.
Remember that the darker the the area is, the glossier it will be. If the majority of the texture is black, you should invert the colors of your black and white specular map and repeat this process.
You may have to make it brighter or darker in spots but it works as a starting point for the roughness.
For metalness, you will either have to paint it yourself or repurpose another map to use as the green channel.
The blue channel (transparency) should be completely black unless you are doing something with transparency.
A finished RMT texture should look something like this. This is from the Fading Blossom LBG.
After you're done, hit Save As and save your file as a ".pdn". This will allow you to come back and make changes if necessary.
Save the file as a ".dds" and change the type to "BC1 (Linear, DXT1)". When prompted to, flatten the file. This removes all of the layers, which is why you should save as a ".pdn" first. Convert it back into a .tex file using Jodo's Tex Converter.
The CMM file controls how colors will be assigned to a texture. This usually applies to armor pigments. The more red an area is, the more an area will be affected by armor pigment. If you make a CMM entirely black, changing armor pigment will have no effect on the color.
Here is a BML and CMM side by side.
This is how the CMM looks in game.
When you are done with your CMM, save it as .dds with the type set to "BC7 (Linear, DX11+)". Convert it back into a .tex file using Jodo's Tex Converter.
This guide covers the most important and commonly used texture types. See these pages for more information on other texture types.