How does one go about skinning monsters?

[EvilGrins]

...this is probably really easy...

I've been hunting skins down for other reasons when it hit me that there's some impressive skins for Unreal1 monsters in the ut2004 Invasion. Like this one for the Warlords:



I even went looking for more and found a few dozen good ones, like this wicked looking thing for the Krall:



Thing is I've tried skinning monsters on maps before with mixed results. One time it worked great...but I haven't managed to do it again.

I went into monster properties, a specific monster for a specific skin, went under display, and under skins put the skin in I wanted to use. It worked, a variant Skaarj that is fairly amazing. However, when I tried it for the Warlord it didn't work even though I did the exact same thing.

Take me back to basics. How do you skin monsters?

[jaypeezy]

Sometimes, you have to go into Display>Multiskins>and then here there should be several slots in which you can enter skins/textures; when done properly it will show up on the model in the editor.

[Rakiayn]

those are some nice texures
can you share the utx file here?

[jaypeezy]

^ Seconded. These are some awesome skins! I can't find them on the web; if you could share any of the skins you've got, particularly for the skaarj trooper/krall models, I would greatly appreciate it.

And because I'm such a nice guy, I'll give you this little image showing you what to do. (Right click the image and select "Open in new tab" to see the whole image) Just import the images into a texture package, then in the monsters properties - when you're under multiskins - apply the texture into one of the slots until you see it actually changes in this model.



For some reason it's usually slot 0 or 1; also for some reason, while this allows the texture to stick on the model *while it's alive,* sometimes when it dies the skin goes away. Try applying the same texture to every slot, as well as the "Skin" box and see if that might fix it. If not, you might have to make a custom Warlord class that uses the skin, or ask someone else here for help with that...

[EvilGrins]

Sometimes, you have to go into Display>Multiskins>and then here there should be several slots in which you can enter skins/textures; when done properly it will show up on the model in the editor.

That part I know but the original monsters it doesn't seem to work on so well, or I'm just not saving them right. I put skins into MyLevel, connect them to the monster as you describe there, build, save, and then when I go back to check the skins aren't in MyLevel anymore.

those are some nice texures
can you share the utx file here?

Sadly, no. I got them from a different site and they're not in a .utx but individual .bmp files.

And because I'm such a nice guy, I'll give you this little image showing you what to do. (Right click the image and select "Open in new tab" to see the whole image) Just import the images into a texture package, then in the monsters properties - when you're under multiskins - apply the texture into one of the slots until you see it actually changes in this model.

That does seem pretty simple but I may still have an issue. The monsters I've tried to edit are in CreatureFactories so they're not literally on the map for me to do this to when editing.

[jaypeezy]

Ahhhh. Yeah, Creaturefactories are one of those cases in which you can't get the relevant monsters to look a certain way, because they refer to the default monster (prototype) which do not have said skins. You'll have to save the UTX, and then make a custom package with the monsters you want then in their default properties for the monster, apply the skin like above. When the CF is triggered, they should come out with said skin.

[EvilGrins]

Totally forgot about this, so here we go again.

A lot of the monster skins I've got for ut99 come out of ut2004. The gametype Invasion has a bunch of monsters, some old Unreal1 standards but the folks that want creative monsters for their games have been making more interesting skins for them.

Like these:


I've gotta take screenshots of that to use them because the UnrealEd for ut2k4 doesn't export to .pcx and I don't know how to edit a .dds file. Even with that, I couldn't fully use that Titan you see in the screenshot. The blue crystals on its skin are animated, it's a multi-layered texture.

Does anyone still want me to post individual monster textures to this thread?

[JackGriffin]

Be careful with pulling textures from 2k4 for use directly into UT. The shading system made for UEngine2 is much more advanced and could crash your renderer if you try to play it online. It's fine to play around locally but please take care if you post anything for download and test it online first to ensure the skin is OK. It's pretty easy to make a mistake here if you don't rinse the texture through photoshop first to check everything.

[papercoffee]

As it look like he can't export the textures in a proper way ...he makes screen-shots of the textures and use those for the skins.
Did I get it right?

[JackGriffin]

That's perfectly acceptable and in fact would be my preferred way of doing it. If others are reading this and would like to follow along you can also go the route of exporting the pcx from 2k4's editor. Once you get that texture run it through photoshop and check two things:
1) make sure the mode is indexed color and 2) change the format to BMP.

Once this is done if there is anything in the skin that isn't friendly to UT's renderer it will have been removed. Oh, and it bears being said that a titan skin in 2k4 probably won't translate to a titan in UT. The models must match for the texture assignments to swap correctly. If they aren't then the titans head texture can render on it's feet, etc. You'll know immediately if it doesn't match up when you test it.

[EvilGrins]

As it look like he can't export the textures in a proper way ...he makes screen-shots of the textures and use those for the skins.
Did I get it right?

Yup.

There's probably a way to do it with that version of UnrealEd but until I work it out, screenshot then cropping is all I got.

[jaypeezy]

I would definitely not mind if you posted some more textures here, or where to get them.

Heck, I might even try to convert them myself.

[Feralidragon]

As it look like he can't export the textures in a proper way ...he makes screen-shots of the textures and use those for the skins.
Did I get it right?

In a small note, I did a few textures/effects with the UT3 material editor, and then took screenshot and cropped to use in my stuff. There are just some things which are easier and look better if made in a game than in photoshop.
It's impossible having this sort of materials in UT (unless you have a multi-layered mesh or specific polys tweaked or other small but painful tricks, or unless you use UT SDK which seems to make this possible as well), so in the end you will always end with a static texture.

[EvilGrins]

Well, I don't use Photoshop. I use ThumbsPlus...




...just sayin

Apologies that these are .JPEGs but my usual image hoster is having a bad day so I had to opt for mobypicture.com which automatically converts to those.

[EvilGrins]

ut2k4 has some great skins that can go into ut99...


...though admittedly some of them do suck.