Noob Post - Best Skin Program

utalice

Hi,
I wanted to try my hand at Unreal Tournament skinning, but the Skinmaker program from Antonio Cordero doesn't work well with the updated OpenGL/nVidia drivers. =(

I was wondering which is the best (and affordable) application for a noob to use for editing and designing skins?

Thanks!

dejawolf

the best is photoshop, the most affordable is MS paint.

CrazyButcher

freeware:

http://www.gimp.org/

http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

utalice

Do you know if either of these two have these functions I list below? I was told that this is what I need (sorry, should've posted that first):

Does it allow for saving as 256 colour images? Note: if a package says it can save "web safe files" or *.gif files, then it can do this.

Can the package save PCX and BMP files? Most newer packages have this ability, check with the company if you are uncertain. MS Paint will not save PCX files.

Does this package support layers? This isn't totally essential, but will come in handy.

THX !

Japhir

i believe the gimp does all that, just not as good as photoshop but good enough.

ElysiumGX

Gimp. Also, try looking at Paint.net as mentioned. Its development is progressing nicely.

utalice

What about MilkShape? anyone used that?

Neo_God

when you say skin program, do you meaning texturing or modeling? Milkshape, to my knowledge, has no means of creating an actual texture.

Richard Kain

The Gimp has improved considerably over the past few years. It's current iteration is quite capable for the purposes of working on game textures. (skins) If you don't have the budget to get a copy of Photoshop CS3, the Gimp is your best choice. Naturally, Photoshop is the default choice, and the most feature-rich. But some of us just don't have the hundreds of dollars to drop on it.

And I know for a fact that the Gimp handles all the features you mentioned. It will save gif, png, jpg, bmp, pcx, heck, it even saves and edits photoshop's psd format. It will even do targa (tga) files and it fully supports alpha channels on any format that supports it. (such as psd, tga, and png) It has layer editing, although it will only save layers for certian formats. (such as psd) Formats like gif, png, jpg, and tga have to be flattened before they can be saved. (although tga and png will retain their alpha channel even after flattening)