Skin Tutorial: Photoshop CS3

[Vendirty]

This is a tutorial to customize a skin from Unreal in Photoshop CS3. Will work relatively the same in any Photoshop version, CS3 is just the one I use. :] Let's get started.

Step 1: Exporting a skin.
Open Unreal Ed and open up the texture browser and open any skin file you want (i.e. female1skins.utx, male1skins.utx, etc.). I'm going to use Male1Skins.utx for this tutorial and the kurgan skin. So just select the skin, File->Export. Save as Kurgan.pcx or change it if you feel like.

Step 2: Start Editing in Photoshop.
In Photoshop just open up the Kurgan.pcx file. You cannot edit it yet because first you need to change the mode on the picture. All textures exported from UEd will be in Indexed Color (marked as red). So you want to go to Image->Mode-> RGB Color (marked as green).

Now we can start making our changes to our skin.

Here I made a copy of the background image. Applied a Neon Glow filter on it and set it to Color Dodge giving some nice bright colors and such. And added my name to the chest area. Of course you can do alot more than this, use your imagination. For anyone that isn't photoshop savvy feel free to message me or something and I can try to help you out with the basics. (NOTE: Adding font to the chest area has to be reversed. In the images on here it shows them regular, but I changed it for the final image.)

Step 3: Completing Photoshop.
Now as you did in step 2 where you changed the color mode, now you need to set it back to Indexed Color. So go to Image->Mode->Indexed Color. When you do this you will see a couple of windows.
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Click OK on both, no need to change any options. These windows may change depending on Photoshop version. But always easier to just OK all the windows and not change anything.

Notice all the layers merged into one single layer, as asked in one of the questions when changing the color mode. Now save your finished image and make sure to set the file type to .pcx otherwise you will not be able to import it into UEd. I saved it as DKurgan.pcx.


Step 4: Importing.
Back to the UEd Texture Browser where you exported your skin. Go to File->Import and select your saved finished skin you just saved at the end of Step 3 (DKurgan.pcx).

You will see this window pop up. You want to change the Package name to what you like your texture file to be named. I simply changed it from Male1Skins to Male1SkinsDirty and left the Name as what I saved the image as. Group is only if you are making a whole texture pack for a map but in this case you leave it blank. Now save your texture file to the Unreal/Textures directory as Male1SkinsDirty.utx, same thing I named the Package of course.

Step 5: Getting your skin to work in Unreal.
We are almost done, bare with me. Now you need to make your .int file so that you can select your skin in Unreal. Go to your Unreal/System directory. Easiest way I find this to be done is because we used Male1Skins.utx to get our skin from, just make a copy of Male1Skins.int and rename it to the same as your texture file (i.e. Male1SkinsVendirty.int). Open up the new file you just renamed in Notepad so we can edit it. You will see alot of stuff in it that you may recognize.

[public]
Object=(Name=Male1Skins.Carter,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=Male1Skins.Kurgan,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=Male1Skins.T_Blue,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=Male1Skins.T_Green,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=Male1Skins.T_Red,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=Male1Skins.T_Yellow,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=Male1Skins.Male1Gib,Class=Texture)

Now copy a line, doesn't matter which, Object=(Name=Male1Skins.Male1Gib,Class=Texture) and you want to change the Name (red) to the name of your texture file and the name of your skin you made. Object=(Name=Male1SkinsVendirty.Dkurgan,Class=Texture). Save the file and close it.

Step 6: Testing in Unreal.
Now you can open up Unreal and hopefully all was done correctly to where you go to your Multiplayer->Player Setup and under Male 1 your skin should show up in all its glory!

A very pink man with the name DIRTY on the chest. lol. Look out kids! XDDD.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and understood it.

[Diehard]

Just stumbled over this tutorial, and its good, but there are a few errors in it though.......

And this aplies to the change to index coloration and the file being saved as PCX. As i often point out on forums around and on my site, you cannot save the correct index coloration in Photoshop as PCX format. Even if we want to, Photoshop simply does not support the settings combined with the fileformat And this is regardless what version Photoshop you use, since they are industrial standards. In order to have textures imported correctly in UnrealEd and UnrealEd2 you HAVE to save them as BMP files in Photoshop. But with the correct settings while changing the mode to Index !

And the correct settings are:








The fact when you save it as PCX and you get a warning, "save this as a copy" already is a bad sign. And even though UnrealEd will import this PCX file, it still does mean its internally corrupt. It also wont allow you to save it as custom Index coloration for Mask blending aside black. In that case the editor will even refuse to except it, and the import fails completelly.

Effectivelly there is only one(two including custum colors) Index settings available, and theres only one format that will be excepted by UnrealEd without any flaws and that is BMP.




And this also aplies to The GIMP, that program is also capable of having the correct settings with the BMP format but lacks the support for PCX. For The GIMP the the settings are as follow:








And the settings for Photoshop and The GIMP are exact, if you alter any setting the file will be added to the utx package while its corrupt. And the only known program of doing so is Paint Shop Pro. That program is able to save correct indexed colored PCX files. Unfortunatelly i dont have the programm, thereofore i cannot give the settings.


Though i still need to redo those page, most can be read again here at this link: Creating Normal Packages
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[£éè£å-(DOG)-]

With Paint Shop Pro it's simple to do.
Reduce the Color of your pic to 256, choose these settings in the dialogbox for it:

Octree optimized, Error-Difusion and Reduce Color Bleeding

to save the file as pcx choose Save as... (press F12)
look for Zsoft Paintbrush pcx (it's at the bottom of the list)
under Options make sure Version 5 is selected

never had problems with these pcx files in Unreal

sorry that I can not add screenshots for better understanding