Step 1) Getting Ready and Prepared
1 First before you can skin you must have it all set out for you and the right program(s). I found that for starting basic skinning GIMP is the way to go. It's a freeware and easy to use for skinning. You can find the download here.
2 But you must have the gimp dds plug-in for skinning. Note - Unit skins are in dds file. You can get that here. Installation of the dds plug-in.
- Open up the folder and you'll find dds. This obviously is the dds plug-in.
- Copy or cut that and paste it in C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins
3 And your Gimp program is ready to skin. But are you? At this time I bet your wondering one thing - where are the skins? Well that's the problem, the skin files are in paks located at - C:\Program Files\The Creative Assembly\Rome - Total War\data\packs. But you can't get to them without Vincetorix's Pak Extractor. Instructions are included but I found it kind of hard for a newb like me.
Using Vincetorix's Pak Extorcor -
- Copy or cut, the two files that say Pak extractor. Pak extracor.exe and Pak extractor batch file (it will have MS-DOS batch file under neath it)
- Paste those two files in C:\Program Files\The Creative Assembly\Rome - Total War\data\packs. aka, where the skins are.
- Next run Pak extractor.exe but double clicking on it. In about one secound it should say press any key to continue. Do that, then move on and run the batch file. If you watch the writing it will say finished making directories and such. BUT DO NOT CLOSE OUT. There is still much more to come. Wait a while unitl it's finished copying the files.
- Once it's complete there should be a new folder there called data. Go to data/models_unit/textures and there should be unit textures.
4 If the data is not inside then clearly you stopped the batch file before it was done. Re-run it and make sure it gets everything completed.
Step 2) Getting Your Skin In-Game
Now I bet I know what your thinking. Go find a cool skin make it cooler and then run your game, right? No
But before you you put a new skin in-game you probably want to edit it first right? well that's easier.
- Find a skin in Rome - Total War/data/Packs/data/models_unit/textures.
- Right click on it and open it with gimp_win_remote.
a message will pop up asking if you want to load mipmaps, say ok.
Now if you did everything like your suppost to you now have a skin in your hands. This is the part were you do your stuff. But not now. Since your learning how to skin you don't really get to skin. For now just put a big dot on his/her chest and call it good. Something you can remember. Next go to file save as. (saving the skin is one of the most important things when skinning with gimp) Here's what you do-
(note - skinning techinques at the bottom)
- Chosse the place where your going to save the skin. Make sure you save it in C:\Program Files\The Creative Assembly\Rome - Total War\data\models_unit\textures. But before you save it there change it's name to something new_unit.tga
or do what I do just add a o to it's name like - unit_easterno_archer.tga After you've done that a box will appear asking what compression you want to save your dds file in. (if it donsn't ask this that means your not saying this in dds format, fix that) Make sure you save it in BCT3/DXT5 and check the box that says generate mip maps.
- Next open up descr_model_battle in C:\Program Files\The Creative Assembly\Rome - Total War\data
- Scrool down until you find the unit of the skin you changed. Change this line -
texture carthage, data/models_unit/textures/unit_example.tga
to -
textures carthage, data/models_unit/textures/new_unit.tga
Basically your just chaning the name at the end to your skins name so it will use that in-game.
Now run Rome - Total War, and if you did things right you should now have a big black dot on some dudes chest.
Skinning Techniques
So now that you now how to get a skin going you might want to know a little more about how to "skin" or really just edit unit textures. Here's a few hints and ways I skin my units -
- One of the best resources to skinning a unit is other skins. You have a whole stock of differnt units, use them?
- Another great resource is the internet. It has everything! I suggest using Google to find what you want.
- One great tool from GIMP is colorize. Use your selector and well selecect something, then on your toolbar go to colors drop down and click on colorize. There you can change the color to anyting you want. This is great where you might be wanting to change if a julii unit (red) to a scippii unit (blue)
- Also in colors there's many differnt tools that can be very useful. Try them out and see what they do.
- Gimp has many great tools for skinning, I suggest exploring them and trying everything out to get a feel of what they do. It really helps in the long run.
Example-
Here's a little example of some basic skin change -
Parts of A Rome Vanilla Skin -
- BODY, red is the front of the body, blue is the side of the body and purple is the back of the body. This can come usful when editing a detailed skin.
- SKIRT, in other words the lower part of the body. And I use the word skirt because most models in rome total war use one, and it's the same way with the body - red is front, blue is side, purple is back.
- HEAD, this is the obvious head, it's pretty much self explanitory on what needs to go where.
- SWORD, yep this is the sword. Not much to say on it just mess around with it and see what looks good.
- SPEAR AND OPTIONS, the spear is very small but you can still change it's apperance but simply selecting it and then whatever you please. The options are called options because not all skins will have them, and if you understand correctly the peice of the helmet goes down there to but still goes on the face.
- ARMS AND LEGS, the top green part of the arm is the sleeve, if you don't want your unit to have a sleeve then you think you can just put skin over it right? wrong, the model will still be a sleeve there and it won't look too pretty.
- SHEILD, you are not seeing the whole sheild in this skin because the model takes that peice you see there and just duplicates it onto the other side, so think of it like a butterfly kind of thing.
- CREST, this is another "optinon" because most other skins wont' have on. the top part also with the crest is what the top of the hair of the crest will look like.
GIMP Skinning tutorial (how to skin without using money)
Originally Posted by Icedie of South
Common Errors-Here's a very good one, probably better than mine:
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Re: GIMP Skinning to tutorial (how to skin without using money)
Re: GIMP Skinning to tutorial (how to skin without using money)
Problem solved.
