[WIP] Steelbeasts-OKW War Animals
Hello everybody!
I don't have any experience in creating skins, but, for heaven's sake, I love CoH2, there's plenty of tutorials available and I'm starting a course in Game Designing this year so I may give it a chance!
Anyway, enough with introductions, what I want to create is metal twisted vehicles, with spikes protruding from the sides, jaws in place of the pieces of ordnance, may be even some metal plates attached on the front hulls arranged in such a way to resemble a couple of eyes, to further enphasises the idea of a mechanical monster lumbering forward towards the enemy lines.
This is going to be a difficult challenge for me, but should I be able to upload on Steam a final product which I consider decent, that would be already a great success for me.
Well, wish anybody who partecipates in the competition best luck for their projects as well!
I don't have any experience in creating skins, but, for heaven's sake, I love CoH2, there's plenty of tutorials available and I'm starting a course in Game Designing this year so I may give it a chance!
Anyway, enough with introductions, what I want to create is metal twisted vehicles, with spikes protruding from the sides, jaws in place of the pieces of ordnance, may be even some metal plates attached on the front hulls arranged in such a way to resemble a couple of eyes, to further enphasises the idea of a mechanical monster lumbering forward towards the enemy lines.
This is going to be a difficult challenge for me, but should I be able to upload on Steam a final product which I consider decent, that would be already a great success for me.
Well, wish anybody who partecipates in the competition best luck for their projects as well!
Replies
But among the possible type of reskins for the competition is included one where you can turn the metal of the vehicles into flesh.
How is that not considered as remodeling?
I followed step by step what was told in the Mod Builder and Wizard tutorials, I uploaded the OKW skins, I downloaded the free version of photoshop, but this is what I came up with when I tried to reskin the jagdtiger....
(I checked with other units as well, this is always the same type of image I get)
This is clearly not what I am supposed to work with in order to create my skins, aren't I?
Has anybody any idea what could have gone wrong?
I mean, there should be at least a 3D model of the unit I'm going to reskin, right?
How can I reskin a unit if all I have is each drawn component of said model?
I can't even recognise some of those components, how am I supposed to know which is everything's right spot in the final model?
On a side note, thank you all for the replies, your information is extremely welcome!
edit: I couldn't find online, so what's the exact definition of UV shell? I can already imagine what they are , but I'd like to know what is its professional definition, since I'll have to know these terms once I start my Game Developer course.
As far as seeing what you paint, it's a laborious task of guess and check. Paint, save, build mod, load up the game, then using a cheat mod, plop your vehicle for examination. It's tedious for sure.
In most cases throughout game history we've not been able to paint directly on a model. The tech has been around since the mid 90's really, but it was too clunky for production till the past decade or so, and even in the early 2000's it was fairly specialized software. (Remember deep paint anyone?) Even then, when making a texture mod, the models were often in some specialized format that the public never got access to.
Oldschool production, and just about every texture mod and community skinpack ever had just the flat textures to work with. This is where being an artist comes in. You actually need to be able to visualize and work with the 3d form in a 2d flattened space.
A few terms to help out:
Skin - the texture the model has on it. I've seen it used lately to mean "the model I'm using in the game" but this is more by players than by developers.
Model or Mesh - The actual geometry that has a skin on it and that moves about in the game.
So this is a skin, or texture competition. No modeling involved. no geometry changes.
You can totally revamp the texture without having a source model. Its harder, but the models involved are all unwrapped quite well and with minimal distortion.
To address some of your questions: Download the PSD's look at the wireframe of the UV islands. Paint each island a recognizable color. Export that as a texture and bring it in game. Take screenshots.
Alternatively grab a UV checker texture (http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Coordinates) Export that to the game. Take screenshots.
A UV shell, or UV island, is a single contiguous block of vertices in UV space. The flattened representation of the model has discontinuities for various reasons, usually ease of texturing and minimization of distortion, and this results in separate regions. Simple models like a sphere may have only a single UV shell.
Hope that all helps. Good luck, and have fun expanding your skillset and comfort zones.
UV mapping is how we are able to project a 2d image on a 3d model.
Check out the wiki and don't be afraid to look online to learn some more! http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Coordinates
However, this is what I came out with: Error building my_skin.mod: Java home path not set.
what am I supposed to do in order to solve this?
this is what I tried to create
Mostly changed the overall saturation and added a bar on the cannon to easily recognise it.
Its in the coh2 tool under options you need to set your current java settings
+1 for anyone new to making COH2 skins to watch eliw00d's tutorial videos.
The Java Runtime and Flex SDK requirements are also explained here:
http://modding.companyofheroes.com/mod-builder