Here is how to make a pickup texture go from this:
to this:
using wotgreal exporter and photoshop Krid.
First of all you'll have to export the the weapon skins and
I prefer using wotgreal because it allows to exporting to *.bmp which is
my editing preference. Since you have experience with wotgreal
I'm gonna skip the how to's on exporting those skins.
Now UT99 weapons skins have a pickup texture that is a
combination of four hand held skins which usually match.
At this point I'll start up Photoshop and open the hand held skins of
the weapon I'm working on and change them from Index to RBG mode(Image/Mode/RBG Color).
Then I enlarge the textures to 1024*1024(Image/Image Size)
and then apply 2 sharpens(Filter/Sharpen/Sharpen = twice).
At this point I adjust the textures lighting because UT99 textures
seem a bit washed out.
I then adjust the Input Levels of the textures(Image/Adjustments/Levels)
to anywhere between 0.7 to 0.5.
Then adjust the Exposure(Image/Adjustments/Exposure).
Modifying the Exposure anywhere between +1.5 to +4 and
Gamma anywhere between 0.5 to 0.7.
Then I adjust the Brightness and Contrast(Image/Adjustments/Brightness/Contrast).
Modify the Brightness anywhere between -30 to -100 and Contrast anywhere between +30 to +60.
NOTE: That you should probably apply the same Image adjustments to all four textures per weapon
but not all four textures will always have the same levels. If that is the case instead
of adjusting all four textures separately you could just combine them all before applying
those adjustments but you'll need to separate them again after you have reduced
the combined texture to 512*512 for the pickup texture.
After that then reduce all four hand held textures to 512*512. Change them from RBG to
Indexed Color(Image/Mode/Indexed Color) and save as *.bmp. At this point do not close
them in the editor because you need to still combine them for the pickup texture.
You need to now take all four textures and combine them making a 1024*1024 image.
So hit the Step Backward on the last change you made to each texture which was
Indexed Color(Edit/Step Backward). Combine them in the order of the default pickup texture
and now reduce the size to 512*512 and Indexed Color/save as .*bmp.
You should have 5 new textures for your UT99 weapon. I'm really not good at tutorials so if
I missed anything feel free to fill in the blanks.