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2 Altering the existing skin In this chapter we will need; A text editor (notepad, wordpad, word etc) A graphics program (Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop etc - best to have one that supports layers) Modview You will need to be familiar with how your graphics program works - this tutorial focusses on the skinning aspect, not the finer points of graphics programs. We have chosen the Prisoner as the base for our new skin. 1. Copying the folder. Locate the folder C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars JK II Jedi Outcast\GameData\base\models\players\Prisoner\ Right click, copy. Paste it into the C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars JK II Jedi Outcast\GameData\base\models\players\ directory Rename the pasted folder from "copy of prisoner" to "oldrepublicpilot".  2. Editing the skin files. Open up the /oldrepublicpilot/ folder. Locate the three .skin files; model_default.skin model_blue.skin model_red.skin  Open up model_default.skin in your preferred text editor; Notepad, Wordpad, Word etc. This file tells JO where each image that makes up the skin is located. Don't worry about the /stormtrooper/ paths - they're just the caps - ie, they're the cross-section slices of body you see when you dismember an enemy. You'd only change these if your model was a droid, or an alien with green blood or whatever. So, using your text editor's "find and replace" function, find /prisoner/ and replace it with /oldrepublicpilot/.  Now your model will look into our new directory for the skin images, rather than in the old "prisoner" directory. Do the same "find and replace" /prisoner/ -> /oldrepublicpilot/ for model_blue.skin and model_red.skin 3. Writing the surface (.mvs) file. We had a play last time with turning surfaces on and off. For our pilot we want to use the alternate face, if you recall. We need a way to tell the game engine which surfaces we want turned on and off. This information is held in the .mvs file. Modview can write .mvs files for us, so load up the prisoner. Expand and Scroll down to the "head" parts as we did last time; Turn off "head_face" The prisoner should now look like this;  Now that the model is looking how we want him, go to the file menu, and select "Write Script". Click through the dialogue box so that model.mvs is saved in your /oldrepublicpilot/ directory.  Next time you open modview to view this model don't open the model.glm file (as you'll get the old, bearded guy), but open the model.mvs file, and all the correct surfaces will be on. 4. Altering the jpgs and seeing the changes in modview. Now this bit is going to be quite difficult to write up, as everyone will have different art programs. I'll try and keep this as general as possible. I use Paint Shop Pro, and can assist with any questions about that program. Hopefully someone who uses photoshop will pop in here to help out those who prefer that package. You will need to have a bit of talent and skill to be able to make decent skins, though by recyling and recolouring existing JO textures, even a novice can get pretty good results. Use your art program to view the contents of C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars JK II Jedi Outcast\GameData\base\models\players\oldrepublicpilot\ Hopefully you have a thumbnail viewer;  You can see that we have 3 icons, plus team variation colours. We make team colours last, once we have the default skin finished. We just recolour portions of the default skin to do this. The mouth_eyes.jpg we don't need to change either, unless you want to change eye colour or give the model some dental work. 5. Recreating the clothing and face. The only images we need concern ourselves with at this stage are; basic_hand.jpg Let's start somewhere easy; Look at our reference pictures again;   Notice how the refence guy is wearing black gloves? See how our basic_hand.jpg is a fleshy hand? All we need to do is utilise an existing Raven black gloved hand. Firstly, open basic_hand.jpg Now browse other players directories for a black gloved hand. Galak has one! :D Open Galak's basic_hand.jpg  Select Galak's basic_hand.jpg, choose copy (shortcut ctrl-c). Select ORP's (Old Republic Prisoner) basic_hand.jpg Paste the copied image into ORP's hand image. In Paint Shop Pro, its shortcut is (ctrl-e) Close Galak's black hand. Save ORP's newly blacked hand. You chould have your JPGs set at about 10-15% compression. Go to Modview. Refresh the textures by clicking the TEX icon in the toolbar, or hitting (alt-R). After a couple of seconds the textures will refresh to the images in your /oldrepublicpilot/ and your guy will go from flesh hands to black gloves!  Congratulations! You have just made your first skin customisation! :D Now if we look closely at the reference pictures, we'll see that the back of the glove is actually red, and probably has gold trim like the rest of the uniform. Use your colour grabber (eyedropper) to grab a nice red from the reference picture for mouse button 1. I'm using the small bright picture in the upper center of this montage; And I don't like any of the gold trim from the ref pictures due to the in game lighting dulling it somewhat, so I picked my own gold for mouse button 2. Go to the basic_hand.jpg and create a new layer if your program supports it. If it doesn't you're going to have a hard time making decent skins I'm afraid. In this new layer make a rectangle with a red centre and yellow trim of 3 pixels over the back of the glove hand, save the image then refresh modview to see how it looks;  Too bright and too "square" Pull the layer transparence down to 60%, select the rectangle and deform it into a trapezium.  Looks OK. Copy and paste that trapesium onto the back of the other glove & save; There are plenty of other ways to achieve the same result, including drawing a triangle and snipping off the pointy end. Whatever works for you. Hint. As well as saving as a JPG for Jedi Outcast to recognise, save a copy of the image as a native Paint Shop Pro or photoshop file, which will preserve the layers and allow for easy fine tuning and alterations later. It's a good idea to save the copies in the /oldrepublicpilot/ directory - JO won't recognise the .PSP or .PSD files, and we'll delete them before we compile the skin anyway. Using similar techniques put the patterns on the boots. As before the Prisoner boots have those brown patterns we want to get rid of. Find some nice black boots (Galak again) and paste them over the Prisoner boots;  Don't worry about all the green areas at the top - they're not used by our ORP anyway. If you want though you can just cut out the boots part of Galak's "boots_hips" image to paste into the ORP "boots_hips"; Save, jump to modview, refresh textures, go back and adjust the image, jump to modview, refresh textures etc till everything matches up nicely. Now let's have a go at the trousers. We want black trousers with red sides. ORP has orange fronts with black sides. Darn. :| Let's browse the other model's textures to see if anyone has any pure black pants (yeah, you know Luke does), open up Luke's legs. Err [face_blush">. The texture's nowhere near as good as our current trousers, so we'll do some more browsing; Chiss legs are cool. Nice leather texture. Chiss texture also used by Jedi Trainer. Lando's pants are black, but again the texture's pretty average. Woah. Look at that cool texture for the reborn, flap.jpg.  I wonder if that would make a better pattern for the gloves & boots? Let's try (such is the nature of skinning that you'll constantly be trying new things and erasing earlier work to try and get better results). Open flap.jpg from the reborn directory. Make a copy of it to work on (ctrl-c -> ctrl-v), so you won't ruin the actual Reborn texture. Reopen ORP's gloves (the .psp or .psd version which still has layers). Use your selection tool to select the beading;  Colorise the selected area (play with the sliders til you get a nice gold. Do the other beading too. Save this new texture in your /oldrepublicpilot/ directory for further use.  Now cut out the upper-right texture, along the outside of the yellow trim and paste it into a NEW layer on the hand texture;  It's way too big, but we can resize it where it sits; Perfect. Turn off layer 2, and copy and paste the new flap onto the other glove's hand back. Save this as a "native" file (.psp / .psd etc), then save as a .jpg and replace the old version in your /oldrepublicpilot/ directory. Refresh the textures in modview.  Let's use this Flap.jpg / gold trimmed thing on the boots too (you do this for yourself!)... You'll need to do a bit of to-ing and fro-ing to get the pattern lined up where the foot meets the leg;  Right where were we... ahh yes - trousers, take #2 Chiss legs are cool. Nice leather texture. Chiss texture also used by Jedi Trainer. Lando's pants are black, but again the texture's pretty average. Rodian and Weequay have got some good red going on. Open up the ORP, chiss, rodian and weequay legs. Make copies of the 3 non-ORP images and close up the originals, so as not to overwrite images from another skin. I prefer the look of the weequay trouser texture to the rodian (plus it doesn't have that gold stripe), so close the rodian texture. Make a new layer on your ORP legs. Paste the red legs into that new layer. Make a 2nd new layer, paste the chiss legs into that newest layer. Make a 4th new layer. Draw rough vertical lines where you estimate the boundary to be between the reference pictures black & red portions of the trouser leg; Save as a jpg, flick back and forth to modview, refreshing the textures until you think it matches.  Use your lines as a guide to the area of Black (chiss) legs to cut out.  I don't like the wrinkles above the boot in the red texture, so I'm cutting an area above the wrinkles on the red layer and pasting it in over the wrinkles;  OK... your turn to have a play and see if you can recreate the shirt. Hint: Search through the other model's "red team skins" to get good pieces to cut and paste for the shirt. And utilise the flap.jpg we found before too. That's enough for this lesson.  Summary We've learned to copy and paste an existing model's directory and rename it after our new character. We've edited the .skin files so our model knows where to look for its textures. We've turned on and off various surfaces and used modview to generate the .mvs file do the game knows what surfaces to display, and we've altered a number of the skin images and watched our changes on the model in modview. As always, I'm here to discuss the above, but can only give specifics on the reskinning part if you have Paint Shop Pro. Next week Next time we will learn some tips for texturing the head and face (though you may be confident enough to have a go at that yourself before next week). We'll make team colours. We'll get the model in- game and take some good angled screenshots. And we'll make the 3 icons from those screenshots. To discuss anything in this tutorial, or to seek further clarification of any points within (or to get a sneak preview of the next chapter), please visit the thread; http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=8874551 jp-30 ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== ==== |
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