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Skinning

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Making your own custom player skins.

Skinning, by Fragger

Fragger's New Skinning Tutorial

Well, here we go again. This time, the game has already been released and I know what's going on. Let's begin.

This tutorial is written assuming you know how to use Modview and Photoshop. Bolt ons are not discussed in this tutorial.

Files Needed

You need the following files to make your skin work in-game:

Textures
G2skin
Npc
Shader
Player icon

Textures

The textures needed are:

Arms
Body
Face
Face 2 sided
Head

Naming conventions

To make sure your textures work in-game, you need to name them properly. From this point forward, we'll use myskin as the skin's name. You can use whatever you want.

Arms

The arms texture is named a_myskin.jpg

Body

The body texture is named b_myskin.jpg

Face

This texture is named f_myskin.jpg

Face 2 sided

This one's named f2_myskin.jpg

Head

This texture is named according to the head style used. There are 3 styles to choose from. They are:

Bald. This is the default style. Name it h_myskin.jpg
Avmed. This is the head with hair. Name it h_avmed_myskin.jpg
Avmedhat. This is the one used when an avmed is wearing a hat or the top of the head has no hair. Name it h_avmedhat_myskin.jpg

Head styles are determined by turning surfaces on in the npc file.

G2skin

This file tells the game where to get the skins from and where to apply them.

Look at this example:

prefs
{
	models
	{
		1 "suit_long_coat"
	}
}

material
{
	name "face"

	group
	{
		name "white"

		texture1 "models/characters/average_face/f_myskin"	
	}
}

material
{
	name "face_2sided"

	group
	{
		name "white"

		shader1	"models/characters/average_face/f2_myskin"	
	}
}

material
{
	name "head"

	group
	{
		name "white"

		texture1 "models/characters/average_face/h_myskin"
	}
}

material
{
	name "arms"

	group
	{
		name "white"

		texture1 "models/characters/suit_long_coat/a_myskin"
	}
}

material
{
	name "body"

	group
	{
		name "white"

		texture1 "models/characters/suit_long_coat/b_myskin"
	}
}

material
{
	name "caps"

	group
	{
		name "white"

		shader1 "models/characters/caps/caps"
	}
}

This skin uses the "suit_long_coat" model and the bald head.

As you can see, only the arms, body, faces and head are edited. The caps are not.

Very important:

If you're using the default textures and only replacing the face, you still have to include ALL the textures in your pk3.

NPC

The npc file determines what model, bolt ons and g2skin file your skin will use. Also, turns optional surfaces on or off (sleeves, asian eyes, ears, suit, trench and lab coats, etc.).

It also determines what surface to attach the bolt ons to.

Here's a sample:

CharacterTemplate
{
	Name "NPC_HongKong_Thug_Leader"
	FormalName "Hong Kong Gang Leader"
	comments "Street Gang Leader."
	Occupation "Terrorist"
	Model "models/characters/suit_long_coat/suit_long_coat.glm"
	Skin
	{
		File "hk_gang_leader_a1"
		mp_identity "thugleader"
		mp_team "thug"

		Inventory
		{
			Weapon
			{
				Name "USAS-12"
				Chance 100
			}
			Item
			{
				Name "trenchcoat"
			}
			Item
			{
				Name "collar_trench"
			}
			Item
			{
				Name "glasses_sun"
				Bolt "*head_t"
				Chance 50
			}
		}
	}
		}

As you can see, this npc uses the suit_long_coat model, the hk_gang_leader_a1 g2skin and it adds the trenchcoat and collar_trench surfaces and the glasses_sun bolt on.

Shader

This file determines what the skin textures will react like when shot.

It tells the game what material the surface is. It's set to flesh by default, but can be changed to something else, like metal, if you've seen pictures of the German version. Then, instead of blood spurting out, you'll see sparks.

It should list all textures that are in the skin.

Here's an example:

models/characters/average_face/f_death
{
	q3map_nolightmap
	q3map_onlyvertexlighting
	hitLocation	models/characters/average_face/f_average_hit
	hitMaterial	models/characters/average_face/f_average_mat
    {
        map models/characters/average_face/f_death
        rgbGen lightingDiffuse
    }
}

models/characters/average_face/f2_death
{
	qer_editorimage	models/characters/average_face/f_death
	q3map_nolightmap
	q3map_onlyvertexlighting
	cull disable
	hitLocation models/characters/average_face/f_average_hit
	hitMaterial models/characters/average_face/f_average_mat
    {
        map models/characters/average_face/f_death
        rgbGen lightingDiffuse
    }
}

models/characters/average_face/h_death
{
	q3map_nolightmap
	q3map_onlyvertexlighting
	hitLocation	models/characters/average_face/h_average_bald_hit
	hitMaterial	models/characters/average_face/h_average_bald_mat
    {
        map models/characters/average_face/h_death
        rgbGen lightingDiffuse
    }
}

models/characters/suit_long_coat/b_death
{
	q3map_nolightmap
	q3map_onlyvertexlighting
	hitLocation	models/characters/suit_long_coat/b_suit_long_coat_hit
    {
        map models/characters/suit_long_coat/b_death
        rgbGen lightingDiffuse
    }
}

models/characters/suit_long_coat/a_death
{
	q3map_nolightmap
	q3map_onlyvertexlighting
	hitLocation	models/characters/suit_long_coat/a_suit_long_coat_hit
    {
        map models/characters/suit_long_coat/a_death
        rgbGen lightingDiffuse
    }
}

models/characters/suit_long_coat/trench_death
{
	q3map_nolightmap
	q3map_onlyvertexlighting
	cull disable
	hitLocation	models/characters/suit_long_coat/trench_hit
    {
        map models/characters/suit_long_coat/trench_death
        rgbGen lightingDiffuse
    }
}

Player icon

This is the picture that you see in the menu. To create yours, open the skinned model in ModView and pose it the way you want and press CTRL + C. This copies the picture to the clipboard and then you can paste it to a new file in Photoshop. Then, crop it and resize it to 128 x 256 and save it as a jpeg with NO compression (whatever you do, don't use baseline optimized, or the game will crash to the desktop).

The naming conventions are very strict but easy. Just name it as follows:

NPC_myskin ( myskin ).jpg

Notice there are 3 spaces in the name. Without them, your icon will not be visible.

Testing your skin

To make sure your skin works before creating your pk3, place the folders containing your files in the game's BASE folder and start a new game. If the icon shows and the skinned model shows when selected, congatulations, you're ready to make your pk3. If not, make sure that you did everything right.

Some common errors are:

No textures - Invisible skin

This happens when the skins are not named right, when the g2skin file has the wrong texture names or when the folder structure is wrong.

No icon showing

The jpeg was named wrong or the folder structure is bad

Avmed head shows as bald with default texture

G2skin has the wrong entry for the head.

Experiment until you're familiar with the right way to do it. Practice make perfect.

This should be the folder structure of your skin. We will use the average_sleeves model with bolt ons for this example:

Once you get your skin to work, make a pk3 with it. only the 4 folders shown on the right should be included.

This is it. I know you're going to have questions, but you can email them to me. My address is:

fragger@attbi.com

Your questions will be included in the next release of the tutorial as a FAQ section and to correct any mistakes.

Are you still reading this? Start skinning!

Fragger

6/31/02

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