PlaneShift

Development => PlaneShift Mods => Topic started by: Samno on December 19, 2008, 04:12:12 am

Title: Making Character Skins
Post by: Samno on December 19, 2008, 04:12:12 am
Really want to create some new skins.  I was wondering how to do that, i unzipped the character file, and found the character art, but there in .dds format, is there anyway to edit these skins, by the way, I'm using a mac.


(edited after bug fixes)

after downloading a skin, unzip it open your art folder, unzip characters, place the Dermm (blue) file in the characters, rename it to DERMM go back to the characters page compress all the files into a zip file, rename the file characters, and place it in your planeshift art folder

Skins
Dermorian Male Blue shirt (in progress)
Download
dermm (blue).zip (http://www.filefactory.com/file/aaa434/n/dermm_blue_zip)

Screen
(http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/5697/shot06me9.th.jpg) (http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot06me9.jpg)


Dermorian Male green suit (finished)
(upload download later)
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Caarrie on December 19, 2008, 03:07:06 pm
http://www.lemkesoft.com/content/193/key-features.html
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Mordraugion on December 19, 2008, 03:40:27 pm
If you want something less expensive

 Imagemagick  (http://www.imagemagick.org/script/binary-releases.php#macosx)a command line utility that can be used to convert image files from one format to another has had .dds support since earlier this year

 The Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/) can be used to open convert and edit .dds files
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Caarrie on December 19, 2008, 03:54:11 pm
that app can be used free and still do what was asked as far as i know, also on a mac since gcc is not installed by default and i dont think imagemagick is either that makes using gimp and imagemagick harder to use ;)

also on all macs to run gimp you need to have X11 installed and unless you are running leopard it is not installed by default.

so to make this short the link i pasted which you can use for free [see download link on site] is the easiest way to view dds files on a mac.
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Mordraugion on December 19, 2008, 04:52:30 pm
Imagemagick nor The Gimp need gcc to install and are in fact just as easy to install as GraphicConverter although Gimp does need x11 installed first, easily done via install disc, which makes neither of them "harder to use" and they don't have any restrictions on use ;)


Quote
And the best is that you can test our award-winning software practically without any restrictions* at your leisure until you decide to make the purchase.

*Restriction: the unregistered version takes slightly longer to start and the batch processing function is disabled
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Caarrie on December 19, 2008, 05:01:58 pm
keep in mind mord this user said they are on a mac. installing on a mac is NOT the same as linux.

Quote from: gimp website
Requirements

GIMP will only run on Mac OS X, not on version 9 or earlier of the Macintosh operating system. There are a number of reasons why it is unlikely that GIMP will ever run on older versions of Mac OS. In addition to Mac OS X, the following is a list of what you will need to run GIMP on your Macintosh:
X Windowing Layer
GIMP uses a separate windowing layer, the X11 windowing protocol, on Mac OS X, which must be installed first. The XQuartz project provides this functionality. There you can download the most recent version of X11.app.

to get the dds plugin working you DO need gcc to build the plugin
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Mordraugion on December 19, 2008, 05:40:43 pm
Keep this in mind you're not the only one with a Mac, nice of you to edit your post after I posted though.
Personally I used the win32 binary .dds plugin didnt need gcc and it works well.

As for easy IM beats all
Code: [Select]
convert image.dds image.jpghow easy is that

bear in mind there are easy ways to skin a cat, but you can't always make a glove out of whats left
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: neko kyouran on December 19, 2008, 06:07:22 pm
keep it friendly you two.
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Entevir on December 19, 2008, 09:15:30 pm
"The eternal battle of the image editing programs" illustrated here in the PS forums is a masterpiece created by Mordraugion and Caarrie. It is an early XXI century work which displays similarities to the "The Battle of the OS" by Windows vs Mac.

This was the first thing that popped into my head upon reading this thread.
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Ulf_the_Moose on December 19, 2008, 09:22:24 pm
I use GraphicConverter in it's free version (ie: not registered, bad I know, but I don't use it much). Open the .dds save it as .png. Spend my time doing art not fussing over apps. :)
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Caarrie on December 19, 2008, 09:58:39 pm
and guess where i learned about the GraphicConverter? Ulf_the_moose ;)
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Samno on December 20, 2008, 03:19:18 am
Thank you for the programs, currently using graphics convertor, and it works fine, I'll post some skins soon

few questions first though.

1. I got the skins done, and I converted them to dds, but which form should I use?

2. Is there any programming required to change the skin file?

3. How can I test to see if the skins are working?
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Caarrie on December 20, 2008, 04:04:04 am
the easiest way to do things is to save the skin files as png and edit the extensions in the cal3d file for the race you have worked in, you can open the cal3d file with any text editor. to test you can load them ingame, there is not really any other way to test them then ingame, the dev applications are not available for others use at this time as far as i know.

so if for example you are working on the dermm and you have opened the dermm.cal3d file, you will see lines like
Code: [Select]
<texture name="dermm_hair_texture"><file>/planeshift/models/dermm/dermm_hair.dds</file></texture>
        <texture name="dermm_torso_texture"><file>/planeshift/models/dermm/dermm_torso.dds</file></texture>
now to make it work with a png file you need to change it like this
Code: [Select]
<texture name="dermm_hair_texture"><file>/planeshift/models/dermm/dermm_hair.png</file></texture>
        <texture name="dermm_torso_texture"><file>/planeshift/models/dermm/dermm_torso.png</file></texture>

do not change the texture name unless you know what you are doing just change the file extension or name as needed.
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Samno on December 20, 2008, 04:09:50 am
Thanks Caarie, that helps alot, i'll see if I can get a different Dermorian shirt working, I'll try to get it uploaded soon.

Wish me luck. :D
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Mordraugion on December 20, 2008, 10:09:00 am
No battle of the image editors I dont care what anyone uses, I just like to give people a choice and not push mine with false information
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Samno on December 20, 2008, 03:12:28 pm
I edited the skins, but when I entered into the client, I couldn't see any characters, when I tried to make a new one, the game crashed.

any ideas?
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Caarrie on December 20, 2008, 03:36:06 pm
did you rezip them back up? can you upload the zip somewhere so that we can see what you did and suggest a fix? if you dont want it public you can pm me the link and i can take a look later today.
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Samno on December 20, 2008, 04:36:03 pm
I made sure to rezip them, that wasn't the problem, I switched back to the original character files, and it started working fine, I changed the DERMM torso file to a png and changed the cal3D file, and I still don't know what's wrong, wiki upload isn't working too well, so i'll get the zip to you soon

and here she is

http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=82068 (http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=82068)
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Caarrie on December 20, 2008, 05:11:00 pm
ok when you go to make the characters.zip, in finder open the FOLDER characters.zip highlight all folders and make sure to zip them into an archive and rename that to characters.zip and see if that helps, what you are doing now is ziping the characters.zip folder into the zip which is not correct ;)
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Samno on December 20, 2008, 05:37:55 pm
got my skin working good, took a screenshot but I can't find it, where are they stored?
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Caarrie on December 20, 2008, 05:49:30 pm
take a look at http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=34400.0 ;)
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Samno on December 20, 2008, 06:21:22 pm
thanks for that,  i'll get some screenshots up soon, in the mean time any suggestions for skins?



(Edit) got a screenshot, not very good one, all that I did with this skin was change the color of his clothes and add gloves, but this was just a test to get stuff figured out and working.

(reedit) sorry forgot the screen
[img=http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/2000/shot05wy2.th.jpg] (http://img353.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot05wy2.jpg)
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Kieve on December 21, 2008, 12:24:11 am
It's great to see someone else poking at skinning. :) Not bad for your first, Samno. Will definitely keep an eye on this thread (when I have time)
Title: Re: Making Character Skins
Post by: Samno on December 21, 2008, 02:35:45 am
Working on a completely custom dermorian skin, again I will accept requests, (within reasonability though.)

Thanks Kieve.

(edit)
updated the first post with new skin