KiZai's Great Guide To Skinning
Hey all,
Since I am now venturing deeper into the coding side of things for the Experiment server, I thought I would quickly make a guide to share my knowledge of skinning so you guys can make some creative content that may or may not get put into the server.
So, before we start I am going to assume that you have adobe photoshop or some other handy image editing software that can edit TGA files. So, grab yourself this handy program called VTFedit found here:
http://www.moddb.com/groups/source-developers/downloads/vtfedit-125
Whilst this is downloading, go to your local drive (usually c:/) and simply create a folder called "Skins" or "My skins" or something along those lines. All done? Good.
I hope by now you have an idea of what you want to skin, so after you have installed your program, grab the textures you wish to edit. I am going to use a counter terrorist skin I previously downloaded, however you can use any .VTF textures you want for this tutorial.
Now, copy and paste your chosen textures into the Skins folder you created earlier and launch VTFedit; be sure to take across everything within the folder, even if you wont be editing it. You will see something like this:
Now, in the tools drop down menu, click "convert folder" and fill out the following screen as follows and hit convert:
Navigate your way to that folder and you should see a mixture of TGA files, VTF files and VMF files (If you cannot see the filetype, simply select "details" in the views drop down menu). Delete all the VTF files, these are no longer needed. You should be left with a folder that contains only TGA files and VMF files:
It is highly important that you keep the original VMF files, else this will not work. Now, open any of the TGA files in your image editing program of choice and edit away. Be sure to keep the texture size as a power of 2, or it will not work. Once you have finished editing your texture, save it. If you find your texture is too large, simply hold ctrl+alt and press "i" and add the new dimensions. 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024 and 2048x2048 are most widely used. (It is best not to resize files that do not fit these measurements, as they will be a different size for a reason:
Once you have edited all the files you want, launch VTFedit again and select the convert folder option. This time, set it up as shown:
Finally, hit convert. You do not need to create the VMT files, since they are already there. Delete the TGA files in the C:/My Skins/ directory, as they are no longer needed; what you are left with is your new skin in the format Source games can read. Now, overwrite the original textures with your new textures (make a backup first), launch Gmod, and see if they worked.
At some point I will write a tutorial that shows how to make them into an independent skin with a place in the spawn menu, but that point is not today.
Good luck, post results here.
-KiZai
