Skinning methods: comparison

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EvilGrins
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Skinning methods: comparison

Post by EvilGrins »

I didn't use Skinmaker for the longest time, taught myself how to in the early 2000's using a combination of ThumbsPlus, UnrealEd, and Windows Notepad. Extracted the textures I needed via UnrealEd to .pcx, used ThumbsPlus to convert those to True Color .png for editing, manually wrote the .int files with Notepad, and converted the edited .png back to .pcx with ThumbsPlus. It worked great.

Skinmaker makes the process work a lot faster, but to a degree it's not as good.

Example: two skins, each made in 1 of the 2 ways.
Image

Killer Kitty was made with my original methodolgy, note how clear and clean his presentation is.

Punisher was made with Skinmaker, note how he's a bit blurry & rough.

Basically the same exact skin, but one is in much better visual quality than the other.

This has presented a problem with my newest project, the USagent. Not completed yet but made with Skinmaker and showing some of the blur and whatnot, especially in regards to the mask.
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Baardman
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Re: Skinning methods: comparison

Post by Baardman »

EvilGrins wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 8:39 pm I didn't use Skinmaker for the longest time, taught myself how to in the early 2000's using a combination of ThumbsPlus, UnrealEd, and Windows Notepad. Extracted the textures I needed via UnrealEd to .pcx, used ThumbsPlus to convert those to True Color .png for editing, manually wrote the .int files with Notepad, and converted the edited .png back to .pcx with ThumbsPlus. It worked great.

Skinmaker makes the process work a lot faster, but to a degree it's not as good.

Example: two skins, each made in 1 of the 2 ways.
Image

Killer Kitty was made with my original methodolgy, note how clear and clean his presentation is.

Punisher was made with Skinmaker, note how he's a bit blurry & rough.

Basically the same exact skin, but one is in much better visual quality than the other.

This has presented a problem with my newest project, the USagent. Not completed yet but made with Skinmaker and showing some of the blur and whatnot, especially in regards to the mask.
Maybe skinmaker uses a different color index or something like that to convert or save, it seemed to me a very lacking tool and frustrating to use.
Like Milkshape for instance is a handy tool for 3d file formats but horrible to work with and it also has some issue and lacks some proper formatting during conversion sometimes.

Why don you try Photoshop or any of the free alternatives like Gimp or paint.net?
Maybe if i get the 3d tool to work in photoshop i can make a video tutorial on it.
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papercoffee
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Re: Skinning methods: comparison

Post by papercoffee »

It's best practice to use premade textures and then just load them into the skinmaker.
The skinmaker is a poor graphic tool.