Online Website. Skin Editor discussion.

[Neverdown]

So, can somebody give some tips on how to use the editor best?

[Egg]

I'll write up some basic stuff soon, but to be honest it's a while since I used it and I've forgotten where everything is! Dogg Thang is miles ahead of me anyway.

The best thing is to read through this thread for pointers, tinker with both the 3D and 2D editors, and see which technique suits you best.

[Dogg Thang]

Whoops! Seems I've got a problem with the transfers to PSP. I filled my slots and have since created new ones so saved over them. Problem is, the PSP has kept the ship information from all the original transfers so my textures are on the wrong ships. I wonder, should I delete them manually from the memory stick?

Edit: Oh you flatter me, Egg. I'm totally cheating and just making sure I don't veer too far from the templates you made.

Another Edit: Crisis over. When I switched off my PSP and rebooted, it sorted out all the skins to the correct ships. On a side note, is anyone having trouble with the Home button from Pulse? It's hanging for me.

[Lion]

So, how do you know what part of the 2D-image is what part of the 3D-image?

you cant really know, thats why the 3d view is there, i guess if you have a screenshot of the ship you might be able to work it out

that's why I was working on the qirex template texture. I haven't had time to make any more headway on it, but it should be useful once I have it done

[uk_resistant]

would be great if you did wireframe templates of the textures, as well as the way you are doing them.

Its a shame SCEE didnt release them..

[Dogg Thang]

Some people are doing some great skins so, in the spirit of sharing and hoping to improve my methods, I thought I'd let you know how I've been doing. Looking forward to Egg's tips and I really hope Supersocks does a little guide for his methods because I reckon I could learn something - it's so precise.

So I'm going to use my Christmas Assegai as an example because it was one of the easiest but all of mine have used the same basics so far.

First thing is to copy the texture map from the skin editor. The copy button is on the colour selection screen. Then I paste the map into Photoshop. These maps are fantastic and, for me, always have remained the template - I find the closer I stick to Egg's maps, the better the craft look. From there, I keep the skin editor window open so I can figure out what part of the map corresponds to what on the ship. So I end up with this - http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y26...ng/Asseg01.jpg

The weird thing about the Assegai is that some of the textures work in reverse - you can see the name 'Assegai' is backwards. As I needed to write 'Merry Christmas' and it turned out that the texture was split into two parts to go across the fins, I needed to be sure of the matching. On one side, the 'Assegai' text would give me the guide I needed. On the other, I didn't have that so I just copied and pasted the parts with the text over the sides without text. I just had to flip them. Here's what I mean - http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y26...ng/Asseg02.jpg

Bear in mind, that was only for matching purposes.

Now here's the important part and this step varies depending on what I am doing. I need to colour the map the way I want it. With the Assegai, I knew I wanted to keep the basic colour pattern (so keeping the strips on the fins for example), so the easiest thing for me to do was use Hue/Saturation to just change the ship from blue to red. But there was a third colour on the Assegai that I didn't want - the goldy colour (I have no idea what that is). So I just went in and used the paint bucket to paint all of those bits to red (using the exact red tones of the rest of the ship). I also painted over a few of the detail sections I didn't want. Just used the pencil tool for that.

So here's what I ended up with - http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y26...ng/Asseg03.jpg

It was all done with simple tools. For craft that had patterns I didn't want to keep, things were trickier. For example, on the Goteki, I wanted to keep Egg's shading but not all the colour patterns. So what I did was recolour the entire thing using the colour palette of just one colour - trying to retain the tones but not the colour patterns. Almost like I did for the browny bits in the Assegai.

So from here, I drew the details. On this, these were simple pixel drawings. Here's my holly - http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y26...ng/Asseg04.jpg

I also did little bells and at the end I added some sparkles - http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y26...ng/Asseg05.jpg

For the text, I always had those initial stages as reference and always went back to them. I just used a font so that was easy but splitting it was tricky, even with the guide. Turns out one side of the Assegai is in reverse, but not the other! But having the guide meant I could match it once I realised the reversal thing. http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y26...ng/Asseg06.jpg

Lastly I finished off my sparkles and pasted red all over the bottom right. Like so - http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y26...ng/Asseg07.jpg

The only thing left was to get it into the editor. On this, I was working in RGB so I could use layers and have a bit of freedom (although in this one the layers were more a safetly precaution - it could have been done without them). So I coverted it to Index colour, 16 colours. Then copied it and pasted it into the editor. That was it! My Christmas Assegai.

For some more adventurous craft (some that worked, others didn't), I did that recolour step to retain the shape and shading but not the colour. For example, here's my white AG-Sys template - http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y26...AGTemplate.jpg It took quite a while to recolour this while not losing the shading but the first thing I realised was that Egg's templates are fantastic and my ships will look best sticking as close to his as possible.

So from here, if I accept I'm going to go over my colours and try to bring it back in the Indexing process though dithering or whatever I'll try to colour it on another layer, whether a multiply layer or whatever.

And I often do a lot of touch-up back in the skin editor because sometimes I end up wth holes or colour overspill. Also some of the editor brushes are excellent for details.

So that's how I'm doing things right now. I'd love to hear what other people are doing as my craft seem to be getting worse, not better. Definitely want to hear from Egg (of course!) and Supersocks.

[rageagainstgeorge]

Great guide Dogg Thang. Very helpful.

I tried sticking to the original template as much as possible for the Pirahna but couldn't get it to work. I am using the attached as my current Piranha template.

[supersocks]

I really hope Supersocks does a little guide for his methods because I reckon I could learn something

Um... what exactly are you after? I can't come up with anything you didn't already cover in your article.

[kowareta|vojeet]

For those who are stuck for colour ideas (and are getting fed up with doing black ships, heh), I've just been sent this by a colleague ..

http://www.colourlovers.com/

Just a handy site full of colour combinations.

Yes, this is a good site, thanks!

[Dogg Thang]

I was thinking of making a WO3 style Assegai but can't seem to find good enough reference. So I'm wondering, outside of the Zone galleries, is there are WO reference place that would have pics or anything that might be useful from the old games?

[rdmx]

Hope this helps Dogg.

[Dogg Thang]

Definitely! Much appreciated.

[Sausehuhn]

Jon, do you know how I can make more than just one layer in Photoshop when I'm working with a custom, 16-color palette? Cause I can't oO

[CR4SH3D]

might be because your opening a bitmap and trying?
if i load a gif i cant add layers

[Egg]

In Photoshop, go to Image Adjustments>Mode>RGB.

You can now add layers and do Layer>Flatten Image when you're done.

If in the process you've added more colours, you can reduce it back to 16 colours with Image Adjustments>Mode>Indexed Colour.

[Edit] - PS, did anyone solve the problem Dogg was having? That is, the editor would bollocks-up the pallette, even if your Photoshop image was exactly 16 colours?

[Neverdown]

Okay guys, I don't get this.
I made my FEISAR white and now I want to put "WOZ" on the airbreakes. So I located the airbrakes by painting them yellow in the editor and then importing that into photoshop. There I put the text in that space and removed the yellow squares. But when I try to put copy it back into the editor it shows up blueish, like this:

Turns out that when I go to photoshop when it's still normal, the blue pixels turn out to be the color "808080" mostly. Sometimes it's "707070" or "404040". How can I make the editor to show my text in normal black / grey, without the blue stuff in it?

[Egg]

That sounds like the problem I mentioned - it selects weird colours when it pastes, sometimes on a small scale (like that), sometimes ignoring massive colour blocks and replacing them with others from the palette.

Must be a way of preventing it - maybe save as a .png first, then Copy and Paste? PNG format might have some unique way of handling colours ... or something.

[Sausehuhn]

I had that problem, too. And why? Because I had three (or something) colors too much. Only when I compared pixels on 700% zoom or more I could see the difference cause they were almost the same colors. So maybe you have more than 16 colors and the editor replaces them with wtf-colors. If that's not the case, then... well... I don't know where the problem lies...

[Dogg Thang]

Well with Photoshop you can actually see the colours you're using by looking at the index. I definitely had less than 16. Even cutting it down to 10 or less didn't help. It's happened a couple of times since but never on anything important so I haven't tried to find other ways around it since. It only really made a diffrence on that one where it just wouldn't retain the red at all.

[Mad-Ice]

So strange, somebody called eleven_gg_xx stole my goteki skin and put it on his feisar even with my name on it!!!