Reskining the Toons - Are you Kidding Me?

[vahaus]

I'm an old hand at Photoshop. I'm not the best but I do fairly good work creating graphics design from time to time for a few web sites.

I extracted the arc files and opened the tex files and exported them to TGA as it says in the Wiki (yes I read first I try to do it with the documentation provided before posting for help).

All I have to say is ... are you kidding me?

The file is a flat file warped like crazy! And what's with the turtle?!?

Is this the format everyone uses to skin the characters in TQ? Do you edit this flat texture file in a similar program as Photoshop and save it and it just look good? If so my hats off to you. I can hardly find the fingers and toes, much less do anything with the rest of it.

It's a shame too i really felt like I could get some skins in for the community because (and pardon me for saying so) there just isn't a lot available out there. There are some out there for female, but finding male skins is getting tough! And the male skins available just don't look "spartan enough" for me. I mean they need muscles, they need veins, and beards! (yes I know there are a few mods out there with beards.

I was also looking at skinning some of the horses in the game (for a future idea I had).

Am I totally off base here? Maybe I just haven't found the right site for skins but I've been here, adult mod site and a few others.

I'll get off my soap box but any help anyone can provide with re-skining that flat file format would be great.

[Orrus]

Heheh I guess youve never skinned before. Pretty much all skins for all games are one texture where the 3d model is "un-wrapped" and "skewed" as you say. Its called UV mapping. Ever seen a 2d version of a globe?


For starters, take each section of the UV map and just paint over it in a different color. Load up this skin, and you will see which colors match with which areas on the character. Then go back and grab a unmodified skin, and start changing the parts you want.

The biggest challenge for texture artists is drawing the 2d texture so that it will look correct when applied to the 3d object.

P.S. the turtle is the artists signature in an unused section of the UV map. You'll also see tiny 3d turtles in the game, like in pool under the oracle. Again, artists signature =)

[vahaus]

Hey thank you for the response. I'll learn to work with it, and you are correct, this is my first attempt at skinning.

[Orrus]

It's not so bad once you learn which areas on the skin effect which body parts =)