OK, here's a problem I am having, and I'm sure this has been answered n other posts, but I've been reading a lot of posts looking for this one little detail and haven't found it.

I am making "new" items, and I want to give them their very own texture.

I have tried to read tutorials on this, such as this thread right here
http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=143176)
and while the custom exoskeleton armor works, has all the modifications and description, the texture showing up is the original texture for that item, and so is the icon. I even made both a male and female version of the texture, and in game play adjusted the graphics to high, med, low, in case I had merely altered one type of texture, but still no luck.

to be honest, the above tutorial was confusing because I don't understand why it is necessary to add 7070 to the end of both the uti and tga, I mean, is that what's supposed to make them work together? I recall it had something to do with body or texture variation, but didn't understand.

So what am I doing wrong? how do I tell a unique uti file to pull up a unique tga file instead of it's default texture?

I can only guess it has something to do with texture variation, body variation, or Pallet ID, but I don't know how to make those things point to a custom tga.

Also, I am using gimp to do the textures, and clicking "save as" without altering any of the file's properties like bit depth or anything, so I assume the file is getting saved to the same resolution bit depth etc as the original. I'm new to gimp, and ain't got good ol' photoshop anymore, so I hope just clicking "save as" saves it in the same bit depth as the original.

The "Texture Variation" is where you specify which numbered texture the uti is supposed to use. The texture should be named just as the rest(I.e PFBG for the fem texture, PMBG for the male texture), along with a number that doesn't match any that the game already uses(as that would replace the texture for a both your custom armor and one the game already uses). For most of the armors, anything past 15 is usually okay.

The icon's name should match the uti filename.

The "Texture Variation" is where you specify which numbered texture the uti is supposed to use. The texture should be named just as the rest(I.e PFBG for the fem texture, PMBG for the male texture), along with a number that doesn't match any that the game already uses(as that would replace the texture for a both your custom armor and one the game already uses). For most of the armors, anything past 15 is usually okay.

The icon's name should match the uti filename.

In addition to this depending on the armour you are using you want to name your tga depending on what armour icon it is. So if your armour is a heavy class the icon will probably fall under the tga format of "ia_class_<palette number here>.tga". Also with your icon, make sure the alpha channel is set to the same as the background that you don't want to appear in game.