Yo,

First time trying my hand at skinning, and before I went ahead to make an actual skin, I wanted to get the process of actually implementing the skin into the game down.

I used the Rosh model for my attempt. Despite the fact that all of the image files in the original Rosh folder were JPEGs, I found my model wouldn't work at all unless I used TGA files. It would crash right out of the game the moment I went to the Profile. So I switched over to Targas and everything's chill, except for two things. One minor, one really, really minor.

The bigger of the two problems is the icon. I made an icon file, but it won't show up. If I make it a JPEG it crashes out of the game when I go to the profile screen, as a Targa, it only shows up as a black box.

Also, it only shows up when I name the file 'icon_default_steam.tga' and won't show up at all if I name it 'icon_default.tga'.

I've been saving the TGA at 32 bits, and the image itself is just a slightly edited version of the original Rosh icon. I removed all references to the red and blue team colours and icons, as this was only a trial skin anyways.

Now, the other small problem isn't even really a problem so much as a curiousity. I've found lots of skins seem to reference back to a non-existant Stormtrooper skin named 'caps.tga', but in the stormtrooper directory there is no such image. Why is that? Can those be deleted to save file size, or will that horribly screw things up?

I've uploaded the PK3 I made to http://steampowered.net/temp/steam.pk3)

Again, it's just Rosh with a slight colour change and my website logo stamped on him here and there. The idea here was just to learn how to implement a skin, so please don't download it expecting anything special, it's just there in case it would help anyone if fiuring out what I screwed up on with the icon.

Now that I know I can get a skin working I'll start in on an actual skin. In the meantime any help with the icon problem would be much appreciated.

I tried downloading your pk3 to take a look but its not working for me.

I noticed that the stormtrooper caps image is missing from that folder as well. In JK2 this link served to cap dismembered body parts, I think that JA may use a shader to cap them. In any case the link may be used by the game engine to run the shader on those areas so leave it in - in any case the filesize reduction will not be much if you remove them. If anyone knows correct me if i'm wrong ;)

Thanks much. So unless anyone tells me otherwise, I'll just keep the stormtrooper references there.

As for the file, I decided to drop it into a zip file and upload it that way. I've found that sometimes uploading a file to the net, then downloading it again somehow corrupts it (I've had this problem almost consistently with Photoshop files).

So now you can download it from http://steampowered.net/temp/steam.zip)

I've also deleted the pk3 that was up there.

Again, any input would be appreciated. I'd like to start work on an actual skin this weekend. Oi, then comes the shaders. That should be interesting.

I got you skin and icon in game.

Change "model_default_steam" to "model_default"
Change "icon_default_steam" to "icon_default"

Note I'm, pretty sure it has to be the way I changed it for any skin. If it is RED or BLUE skins that the skin file would say "model_red" or "model_blue" same for icons. As "icon_red" or "icon_blue."

Also you do not have to use TGA you can save skins in Microsoft paint as JPG or PhotoShop as JPG. I always do.

Also I uploaded you icon to Photoshop and saved it as "Baseline Optimized" with a quality of 9 and as a JPG file. I don't think it matters if it's JPG or TGA I alwasy do JPG.

P.S. Don't worry about the stormtrooper caps. That is just the textures for what you see in dismemberment. They do not have to be in the PK3 with the model.

Again, thanks! I'll try all that as soon as I have a spare moment.

If I did go with JPEGs, would I have to edit the .SKIN file so it looked for them instead of TGA files? I imagine I would, yet in the original Raven file, the .SKIN said TGA yet the image files were JPEGs.

To add bot support would I be able to just edit the bot files from another model and drop them into the appropriate folders? I tried that initially when I made the skin, but removed all the excess when I started running into problems, so I didn't get a chance to try.

I hope no one minds this thread staying around for a while, because I'll probably have more questions, the more I fiddle around with this.

Actually, does anyone know of a good tutorial? I have the document that came with the Raven mod tools, but it was mainly for Jedi Outcast, which lead to a bit of confusion at times.

Specifically, anything that deals with shaders and bot files would be very helpful.

Leave the extensions as .tga in the .skin files, it will still work for .jpg's

You can edit any bot file and rename it for the skin/s you make then just recreate the folder structure in your .pk3 and place it in the right place.

-Plas.

Ok, got everything working fine so I attempted a skin. Started with the Imperial Saboteur and went for a 1930's steampunk style hero type guy. It's mainly an edit of the already existing skin, but I wanted to start simple.

The skin worked perfect, first time, except for the sounds.

I looked at model someone had made and mimicked the folder structure and made sure the sound files were named identically. There was no sound.cfg file in that model's pk3, so I deleted the .cfg from mine...but when I started up the game...it was stil using the saboteur's sounds.

How do I set up a skin to use custom sounds?

http://steampowered.net/temp/falcon.zip)

Just add the sounds.cfg file to your falcon directory containing the .glm and textures and it should work.

Within the sounds.cfg just do like this

chars/falcon/misc
m

Huh. I actually tried that just last night and it didn't work. On a side note, I don't know what I did, but it stopped using the saboteur's sound files when I removed the .cfg file.