Line Infantry/Black Watch skins (and two more questions)

[The Gallant Forty-Twa]

Hey there,

I recently recieved help from -TopCat- in regards to skinning units and I have finally managed to do so. Just thought I would share them with you so you can see.

Below are two seperate units I re-textured to be how I wanted them to be. The first is a Line Infantry unit and the other is a Black Watch unit. Nothing fancy at all, just minor adjustments.

Line Infantry - No particular Regiment, I just made them how I wanted them to be.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The Black Watch - 42nd Regiment of Foot - "The Gallant Forty-Twa"

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Note that the Black Watch actually now wear 'Black Watch' tartan, instead of the random brown/red/faded green mixes that CA made them wear. Now they can fight with their traditional tartan.

Now before I go, I have two questions to ask.

Q2. My Line Infantry have red waistcoats. I'm aware that the faction colours are splashed onto the LI Waistcoats which is annoying because I want them to be white. How can I go about stopping the thing from splashing the waistcoat red so I can have my British Line Infantry with white waistcoats? A step-by-step guide with pictures would be most helpful as I'm still in the learning stages of skinning.

Q1. I would also like to know how I can edit the colour of something without losing the detail like folds etc. For example, if I wanted to change the France Line Infantry jacket from white to blue how would I do so without losing all the foldings/creases/pockets? This is something I have been wandering about for a while now.

Detailed replies would be greatly appreciated as I'm new to this stuff.

Thanks alot for everyone's help, particularly -TopCat- who has helped me get this far.

Regards,
The Gallant Forty-Twa

[ToonTotalWar]

In answer to your questions:

Q1: You can "black" out the area in white in the gloss file for the waistcoat / line infantry, this will allow a white waistcoat to appear, a good tutorial is here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=240048
Q2: you will need Photoshop to perform any changes properly, there are plenty of versions out there and tutiorials within the Mod Workshop once you have PS!

[T.C.]

interested in more help?
Well your getting it anyway

First a few comments on your skins - they are nice but I see where you want to put in the colour white you've just opened your paint palette and selected white. Not a good idea - it just doesnt look realistic and will wreak havoc with the HDR. You'll see that anywhere there is white in the vanilla skin its a mix of all shades of white and grey. You really need to replicate this. The best way to do so is use a 'copy' style brush, it differs depending on what program your using. Just copy from an area that was white originaly, but make sure isnt not just copying one pixel, it needs to copy four or five.
(Also this is the same for any colour)
Anyway, you may think 'thats not white, its all dirty looking' but its the white used in game by all modders

The 'splashing' effect is controlled by the gloss map. Just go into the alpha channel of the gloss map. Everything white is splashed, everything black isnt.
Hope this helps

[The Gallant Forty-Twa]

Hi guys

@ Toon

Thanks so much for your reply. I was able to give my Redcoats white waistcoats =)

@ TopCat

Thanks for the feedback. I'm aware that bold, solid colours aren't the way to go. When I painted models it was the same. I started out doing it really badly with big bold colours and by the end I was doing layers, highlighting and making things look more real. I just wanted to see if I could get the actual process of extracting a skin, changing it, putting it back into the files and using it in game before I invested time in proper skin making.

May I ask you if you could provide an answer for question 2? Toon told me to get PS (which I have) and also check the tutorials on the Workshop but I can't seem to find the kinda thing I'm looking for. If such a thread exists would you be able to direct me to it?

Thanks so much for your help!

Regards,
The Gallant Forty-Twa

[T.C.]

Oh yeah, i see it now.

Well theres many ways to go about this.
First you can copy a jacket with the right colour into the right place (eg, for under the armpits you could find a unit in blue and copy in the area under the armpits)
Second you can change the faction colour, bearing in mind that this will affect the whole faction.
Third, and most commonly used, you can just forget about them until you have the skills! Alot of skins I have seen overwrite the folds, and since the coat is given 3-d texture from the normal map it will still look good
As for pockets, Id just work around them

[The Gallant Forty-Twa]

Ah-ha! Thanks again TC I (genuinly) don't know what I'd do without your help on this!

Your help has been invaluabe.

Regards,
The Gallant Forty-Twa