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How to install skins


RogueSnake79

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It might be worth restating that the theme of the scenario determines which one of the season folders it uses for skins. If you've put new skins in the Woodland folder, they won't show up if you're playing a desert mission. Check to see if the mission is using the Autumn theme, as it will look close to the Woodland theme, but uses an entirely different mod folder for the skins.

Also, if you have two skins in the same folder for the same vehicle and one of them is .BMP and the other is .DDS, the .DDS file will be used.

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  • 1 month later...

I'm a newbie at SBP, are the old skins usable in the new SBP PE? I am going to try my luck at skinning one of these beauties and was wondering how I put it in game to see the progress of the skin. I know how to do it in IL2, flight sim. but this is new to me. Should I be going to a different forum for this question? I use Photoshop CS3. I have some templates that Congo so graciously gave me and am dying to try them. Thanks for listening to me.

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I had the same question when I started out, and a very wise man gave me this advice:

TAC,

My approach is this. I create a scenario in the mission editor and place a vehic that I'm gonna mod on the map,give the SCE. a name like Skinworks.Hit test and run just like you would a single player. Do all this in a windowed mode. Now go to your mods folder and the file on which you are going to skin. Save it as BMP1bu.bmp. Now open your photoediting program and open the BMP1.bmp file and go to town on it. Save often and once before you get ready to view. When you want to preview ,open SBPRO exit sce. and hit restart and this will reload all vehic skins from the textures folder. Zoom in.Zoom out, Look from the overhead,ground level. Any glaring inaccuracies will become readily apparent. All while this is happening leave your editing program up and running so you can always take a few steps backwards and recover,orderly retreat and regroup. Some vehics I did templates of my details and saved them as a PSD file so I could reuse the layers. Things like recovery cables,shovels,tools and such. But now mostly I just work off of the bmp file ,flatten image and save that way they all become original works. Viewing the model in its natural enviornment is more appealing to me. If you ever get tango foxtrot uniformed just go grab your backup file and all you lost was the time. Just my 2 cents. Enough preaching. Enjoy your skinning endeavors.

Congo

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Thank you for your quick reply. This helps a lot. Now all I have to do is find where all the colors are for the vehicles and countries. Thank God for Google. :)

Best to save lots of photos plus downloads from this site and then put the eyedropper tool to use. This will give you your base layer then add texture and weathering to the top of that. Check in with Prime Portal they have some exceptional photos for colors and details. All skins remain usuable except the updated models 2A4, Abrams, T-72, Lepardo, BMD, I think thtas all but if I missed any I,m sure someone will let me know. Good luck and have fun.

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Thank you, Congo I know I will have a great experience doing this. I thought I would start with something small. Does SBP have voids as in IL2 or is there a place for like the template for the CV9040 ? Sorry to ask all these questions. It's like learning to walk again. Sorry the question was already answered, my old age is creeping up on me.

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Thank you, Congo I know I will have a great experience doing this. I thought I would start with something small. Does SBP have voids as in IL2 or is there a place for like the template for the CV9040 ? Sorry to ask all these questions. It's like learning to walk again. Sorry the question was already answered, my old age is creeping up on me.

No voids but look at Dejas site for templates, If you want to do a bang up job its probably best to develop your own templates and such. The default non crewable skins don't have things like recovery cables,tools, dirt and scratches and such so it is necessary to make them. BTW I'm a senior citizen also and thats no excuse. Find a good panel locator or make your own you will probably need it for the new models.

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OK, I made a Scenario and placed the vehicle I want to do in it. Saved as Skin etc., I went to the mods folder and to my saved sce. I cant find how to save it as a bmp file. It only gives me cut, copy, zip. I'm doing something wrong. :redface:

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OK, I made a Scenario and placed the vehicle I want to do in it. Saved as Skin etc., I went to the mods folder and to my saved sce. I cant find how to save it as a bmp file. It only gives me cut, copy, zip. I'm doing something wrong. :redface:

You need to place the texture file in your mods folder for the particular vehicle you're going to work on. It will be either a bmp or dds file. Or if you are working with a psd file you will need to save as bmp or dds, better as a dds as they are considerably smaller than a bmp of the same size. Which vehicle are you trying to do?

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The one I was going to try is the Cv9040B. I downloaded the Nvidia Plugin and I figure out how to bring the skin up in my Photoshop. I think I'm going to have to download some of the already done skins as suggested before to get an Idea oh how this skinning is done. I have a couple of really good panel finders from SimmersPaint I use. When I save my file to work on it later, I saved it as a .bmp file is that right? When I tried to save it as a .dds it said something about too many channels.

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The one I was going to try is the Cv9040B. I downloaded the Nvidia Plugin and I figure out how to bring the skin up in my Photoshop. I think I'm going to have to download some of the already done skins as suggested before to get an Idea oh how this skinning is done. I have a couple of really good panel finders from SimmersPaint I use. When I save my file to work on it later, I saved it as a .bmp file is that right? When I tried to save it as a .dds it said something about too many channels.

The simulation will recognize bmps and load them out of the mods folder. For faster load times the dds format is recommended. When you go to the save feature in photoshop and you click on dds there should be a drop down curtain showing you all the different varieties of dds formats. I think you want to choose DXT1 No alpha channel.

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Thanks I appreciate the help. Is this the one I want to skin or is there another file I should have downloaded to my scenario, it's hard to make out the part outlines? I guess I should use an already done skin to work off of.

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Go here and download a template for the vehicle you want to skin.

Open the template in Adobe Photoshop.

Paint the skin the way you want.

Save as a .dds file using the NVIDIA plug-in for Adobe Photoshop found here

Place the file in your: C:\Documents and Settings\"USERNAME"\My Documents\eSim Games\Steel Beasts\mods\textures\woodland

Open up Steelbeasts and go to the mission editor.

Place your type of vehicle on the map.

Left click on the screen and select view.

Admire your work.

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