Creating Custom Skins with GIMP

[MileSplit]

Anyone know how to do this? Is this posible with GIMP? Or will I have to use another program.
THANKS!

 

[Dr Super Good]

Yes it is possible. You may need to get the .dds plugin though if it does not include it nativly.

You will need to import the existing skin you want to customize to create an effective template. You might also want to keep parts of it in the case of minor alterations. Remember that skins are made of between 3 and 4 surfaces you will need to modify separatly (as they are separate files). If it is not possible to export the image as a .dds directly from GIMP you can use the DirectX Developer Kit which includes the official .dds converter (this will convert most image formats to .dds but does not support conversion the other way). DirectX Developer Kit is provided for free by microsoft for developers who want to create DirectX applications.

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

http://registry.gimp.org/node/70
Get the DDS plugin for GIMP.

In SC2 textures are (TextureName)_Diffuse _Specular _Normal _Emissive sometimes abbreviated just _Diff _Spec _Emiss _Norm.

Your Diffuse texture - the main texture is like in War3, just an ordinary texture. Once you do it, the rest textures are just slight modifications of this one.

Your Specular is if you want to add shiny or slime effects to your model - Example if you are making a metallic object, you can turn your Diffuse texture into Greyscale, make the colors lighter (white, light grey) but if you do white it will shine too much. Darker colors - greyscale or if you just made the Diffuse darker - is what Zerg textures use and add to more 'slime' effect. Based on how light or dark the Diffuse texture is, if it is e.g too light, the Specular shouldn't have white grey colors as it will still look too shiny white.

Emissive texture is easy - you only need it if your model will have lamps/diodes/lights - basically you make the entire background black and only the lights in your Diffuse texture are just enhanced and made brighter. Then you save that as its _Emissive texture. You could turn the black color into alpha then increase transparency of even the 'lights' part of the texture. Some emissive textures are so transparent that you cannot even see them well.

Normal texture: I have asked someone in the past about a single formula to do Normal textures and finally did it last year. You need this plugin for normal map.

http://code.google.com/p/gimp-normalmap/

http://www.galaxywiki.net/Custom_Terrain_Textures#Normal_Mapping

But here it is, the link there has made 1 mistake in the description what you have to do - decompose to RGBA (yes with alpha) not just RGB. "Then fill the red layer with white, and the blue layer with black. Finally select all the layers and go to Colors->Components->Recompose"

it seems Photoshop has better normal maps because I see lots of the relief is lost when converting your Diffuse to normal one in Gimp.

Finally compress your Diffuse, Specular textures to BC3/DXT5 or your textures will be 4MB and with compression this one goes down to 1MB for 1024x1024 texture. For emissive texture you can use poorer quality: BC1/DXT1 Even with DXT5 you get crappy colors and pixels as part of the compression. For DXT1 it would look awful. For Normal textures- save them as Alpha Exponent (NOT DXT type compressions!)

If you choose the wrong compression, e.g saving Normal with DXT5 instead of Alpha Exponent - the Normal effect will be gone and the texture ruined.