Skin Tutorial: The Basics of a Good Skin

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Master_Unreal

Skin Tutorial: The Basics of a Good Skin

Post by Master_Unreal »

This might be a lengthy post so get ready for it (:

This will be written with Paint.NET in mind, if you are choosing to use another program then just follow these steps as closely as you can with your paint editor.

If you do choose to get Paint.NET, the .pcx pluging can be downloaded here -> http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia ... ugin.shtml

Here is a summary of the steps you will most likely be taking

1. Exporting a skin of your choice from UnrealEd
2. Opening it in your paint program
3. Various methods of getting a good result
4. Saving, importing and one last thing

Moving on, when you do get the your paint program running and all that fun stuff, you'll probably want to get a default skin to start out (Kurgan, Gina, etc) I will use what I typically do for a skin and export Kurgan. So to export this, you will want to:

- Open your editor
- On the textures browser, open Male1Skins.utx(There are about 5 skin packs by default, Male(1-3)Skins.utx and
Female(1-2)Skins.utx)
- Export Kurgan.pcx

Now locate and open this in your paint editor. You should now have Kurgan on your paint editor. For me it looks something like this
Image

Now the question that lies with you, what kind of skin are you going to do? This is something I often spend a long time on, maybe more than 30 minutes, so don't feel bad if you do have a hard time deciding what to do, It happens to everyone (:

For me, I feel like doing a sort of Half Life 2 Metrocop skin, with the gas mask and maybe a nice little suit to go with it. Generally what I like to do is start with the easiest part, and for me that's the face. Right now I'll maybe want to look up a picture of a gas mask to use for the skin.

So what we do is grab a picture of a gas mask, select the whites of the picture and invert selection so we get the gas mask, and put it on the skin, and the face area is done! It should look like this
Image

THIS is wrong, its something I see on a few skins that I have to point out, many people do it like this but this is not correct. THIS is what you want to do

What i would do is something like the above, but not stop there. If you noticed on most skins they have a shadow going around an object that is supposed to be in front of another object. This is my method for going about this.

- Make a new layer
- Set the Opacity halfway back(92)
Image

Now select your paint brush and make the brush size 4, you'll want to draw around the edges of the gas mask to get a good or half decent shadow in, this is what I got.
Image

Much better isn't it?

I could go on for hours step by step and finish this skin up, but this is the general idea for getting nice details into skins. Remember that your Lasso Select tool is your friend, it can help to use it when selecting certain areas. There are also multiple options to use when combining layers. Experiment with things like Multiply and Additive and see what you get (:

When you are ready for your skin to be imported into unreal, just save it as any name you want, for mine I will just do
UMetCop.pcx, now open your editor and:

- At your textures browser, hit Import
- Select your skin file

A window should pop up, leave the name and the group as they are, now read carefully, this part is important

Depending on the skin you have, it must match the model you are using, I am using a Male1 Skin so i must name the texture package Male1MetCop

Set the Package name accordingly to the model your skin is for, give it a name, and you should have something like Male3TheOne, hit ok and your skin is now imported! Save it and exit out of the editor, if you are in an editor that is not in your playing folder for unreal, move the newly made skin file to your playing folder (C:\UnrealGold\Textures\)

Now a bit of coding and you are done! You'll need an .int file(I know versions of Unreal in other countries use different localization files, might not be the same? Use the file extenstion you have)

Open notepad, copy and paste this into it:

Code: Select all

[public]
Object=(Name=Male1Tutorial.MySkin,Class=Texture)
Change the Male1Tutorial.MySkin to the correct info for your skin (Mine would be Male1MetCop.UMetCop), save this as the same name as your texture package, for me it would be Male1MetCop.int

Thats it! Open unreal and select your skin!
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