skinning tips & tricks

[lexsis]

can someone from the DTD team share with us your skinning tips & tricks. teach us (wannabes) how to:

- create seamless patterns
- add effects like dirt stains
- make buttons, zippers and pockets

thnx.

[Whisper_44]

nice to see you lexsis - welcome to our den

Coco is the skinning GOD, although Ogre_H is quite teh skinner as well..

[lexsis]

nice to see you lexsis - welcome to our den

Coco is the skinning GOD, although Ogre_H is quite teh skinner as well..

thank you sir.

[ogre_h]

Why thank you Whisper!  

Making a seamless pattern is fairly easy.
Bring your sample into Photoshop. Make a note of the image size, horizontal and vertical.
Then go to Filter\Other\Offset
You'll get a box asking for size. Put in 1/2 of your horizontal and vertical. So if your Horizontal was 100 put in 50.  
Use clone stamp to even out the division lines.
Then go Edit\Define Pattern and give the pattern a name.

When you want to use it go to Edit\Fill and select pattern from the drop down box. Then select your pattern.
If you look through the All Weather Specialists Thread, you can get some ideas etc.
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~damnr6/yabbse/index.php?board=6;action=display;threadid=4667

[Cocobolo]

This seems more complex than I  ever use to make a texture. Not knocking it, but there's a million ways. Mine amy not be the most sensible, but I'm set in my ways, lol.

As for camo, first I find a camo image that is bigger than the area I want to apply it to. Finding good textures is key. Once one is picked, I use a erctangular marquee tool to cut a good piece out, and drag it into the texture. I use "free transform" to scale the cao so the pattern is the right size, and if it needs to be cloned to take up the whole space, I use the eraser with an airbrush to soften the edges. This way you can overlap them some and they look continuous. The texture underneath should be a black and white or similar wrinkle texture. Once the camo is in place, I reduce the opacity and increase the contrast until the wrinkles show through to my satisfaction. Once I'm happy, I merge the layers and use the burn tool and the dodge tool to give it a more realistic look.

For things like dirt stains, create a new layer, which will be transparent, and pick a dirt color. Experiment with different brushes and use the airbrush to put the dirt on. Play with the transparency unitl it looks natural on the background, you should see some of the background coming through. Now use the eraser and experiment with different brushes, I find the splatter brushes work bst for these types of things.

As for pockets, I will either cut a pocket off of a real rexture and blend it into the background pants/shirt texture before putting the camo on, or I'll cut a pocket off of another texture I've done already and lay it on top of the camo'd texture. Buttons, zippers, velcro, etc, I will usually cut from a real image. If you use things from real images, it doesn't look like RSE remixed!

When I'm done with the team mod I will most likely write some tutorials on this stuff. I go about it like I would if I were drawing, and my background is drawing and illustration, etc, so that's how my mind functions. My way may not be the most efficient way. I've only been using photoshop for a few years.

[lexsis]

the methood ogre mentioned was very easy, I tried it your way coco but I need a bit more time to get it right.

are "light source" stains made the same as dirt stains? should I use white as the color? in the NED mod, skins   recceregular_gr_guard_001ver, rebl_regular_gr_guard_001ver are examples.


- what is the best methood for creating vests & tac gear either from scratch or from photos.

- how do you change the color of some existing skins: examples are the susan grey vest in NED mod. susan's vest is black, there are 2 in NED, one green, the other tan.

thnx.

[ogre_h]

Unlike Coco, I'm no artist and I'm lazy  .
I did one vest from a photo, and for me it was very time consuming.
The concept is easy:
Look at a vest from a character you want to edit. Cut it out and save it as a new psd file.
Then go to a site like Blackhawk http://www.blackhawkindustries.com/ and copy every picture of pouches and vests they have.
Then take the pouches, and re-size them until they match what's on the original vest.
What you are trying to do is match the contours of the 3D model in game. You'll be poping in and out of the game alot adjusting size and position. Then you'll also have to worry about color etc.

Changing colors is also fairly straightforward. The easiest thing to do is to create a new transparent layer, and fill it with the color you want. For me that ususally didn't give me the results I wanted, because the original color would affect the new color layer. I usually grayscaled what I wanted to color, made a new layer and filled it with the new color. I then messed with the contrast and lightness to get what I wanted. Then I would make another layer, copy the original vest back in, and then cutout the details, like zippers and buttons, boonie-hat bands, radios, etc.  that I don't have the skill to make on my own.
If you just want to use the original vests and pouches, but just give them a new camo, another method would be to laydown the new camo pattern, make a new layer, copy the vest into the layer, and cut out what you don't want, revealing the camo beneath. I did that here and here
These guys use the same model, (the hats are attachments) and they actually have the same vest. When you do stuff like this always make sure you set your background to transparent. You can see here that I haven't finished editing out everything from this vest.


When you fill, you'll have to experiment with the opacity that you are filling, especially if you want the underlying details to show up. If you look at the grayscaled uniform templates I made, if I filled with a camo pattern I may have used 70% opacity, but with just a color maybe on 40%. It all depends on the effect you want and the colors you are using.  

As for lighting and stains, they're abit beyond what I've done, so I will defer to the master.

Just remember, layers are your friends!  
 

[lexsis]

changing the color is by far the hardest part for me. at one point i was doing it pixle-by-pixle. the other way I did it which was really sloppy was by using the spray brush tool.

Im going to try your methood with the greyscale and see how that works out.

[Cocobolo]

should I use white as the color? in the NED mod, skins   recceregular_gr_guard_001ver, rebl_regular_gr_guard_001ver are examples.

- how do you change the color of some existing skins: examples are the susan grey vest in NED mod. susan's vest is black, there are 2 in NED, one green, the other tan.

thnx.

I assume you mean the faded effect. That's done by using the dodge tool, which lightens, and accenting the wrinkles with the burn tool. It's probably the toughest to get right, because it requires a mental image of what you're trying to make will look like.
As far as changing colors, just use the color balance and hue/saturation consoles to play with the settings. To make something black, you can desaturate it and then reduce the lightness/brightness. As far as the 2 vests on the boonie females in NED, those are custom made from blackhawk textures of STRIKE vests. I just adjusted the colors.

 If you are playing with colors on the standard textures the easiest way is to create a path around the part you want to adjust, and that way only what's inside the path will be changed.

[lexsis]

when you say 'create a path around the part I want' are you talking about the lasso tool or the magic wand?  

[Cocobolo]

Neither. Use the pen tool (3 up from the color selector in the tools box, left side) and when the path is closed, click the "paths" tab near the layers tab, and there you can save the path, and activate the path by clicking the dotted line circle (3rd from the left at the bottom of the paths window) This way you can make a path any shape and are not restricted at all. I use this constantly on every texture. You don't have to save each path, but you can save and create  multiple paths and then just go back and activate the one you want, when you want.