Post your Skinning Tips (FAQ)

[MileHighGuy]

well this thread is for people to post tips and stuff on skinning styles so others can learn from this thread, because alot of people know how to skin, but less can skin. so post your tips here!

ill start

to get rid of a small detail what i do is blur it out then smudge it over until its gone.

help more people make a shtr

[Tygr]

1: Get a good skinning program. GIMP and Paint.NET are two very good choices. Paint.NET is what I use, with the "Conditional Hue/Saturation" plug-in, which is very good for re-coloring only certain parts of the skin.

2: Save small parts of skins to separate files so that you can copy them to other skins, if necessary. Things like armor marking, insignia, and rank markings are very handy to keep on-hand.

3: The Clone Stamp Tool is very handy for coloring over markings or other small areas. Learn to use it, and it will be your friend.

That's all I can think of for now.

[YaNkFaN]

add variation to the color of your skin don't just do a solid color maybe use a hue/saturation so the detail behind the color is preserved

[DarthD.U.C.K.]

make allways a new layer for marking or other details, and give it the multiply-mode, it will preserve details when you paint over them

and better use the klone tool than smudge tool, if you use the smudge too too much the skin will look blurry

[SilvaDalek]

Scratch it up some with white and black slashes. It makes it look 50% better.

[Master_Ben]

If you want to make something detailed, zoom in on the part you need.

[MileHighGuy]

use the free select or scissor select to outline the area you want to edit

[Fiodis]

Use the path tool in GIMP. It's AMAZING.

[Teancum]

Don't use Windows Paint.

'nuff said.

[darkling155]

just let your imagination do it for you(NOT LITERALY ) lol anyway i mean skin what you think feels best dont ONLY (you can if u want) skin just to impress the pro modders (IM NOT ONE) sry for the caps just pointing out and sry if this is bad advice but i think its good so and also you can get some ides from other skins youve seen

[Teancum]

Despite what you may think, random colors together DO NOT LOOK COOL. Please take the time to think about what colors actually work. A barf-green Galactic Marine with red eyes and a purple kama is NOT cool looking.

[Fiodis]

Idk about that, Teancum.... If you messed around with the orientation/saturation/brightness of the colors that could look halfway decent.

[YouJediJunkie]

Eh, people have asked me before how I do my textures, and I guess I should share the basic stuff now.

Hidden/Spoiler:

NOTE: I put a picture below. Follow it when you read the text, it should make sense.

1. Start off with a plain colour in a good graphics programme. I use GIMP, which is a really under-rated programme. Most people think that Photoshop is the best, but no, GIMP is as good at least when it comes to painting. Choosing the colour is probably the hardest step sometimes, since the colours are really important in a game. Follow a basic pallette for your skins/textures in the same map (or at least in the same area) and NEVER (!) use purple clones on Hoth.

2. Make a new "Overlay" layer. Take a brush of your choice, and use black and white to define the shape of your object. It may sound difficult, and yes, it is sometimes difficult. Before you try to do something really advanced, like organic stuff, go with basic stuff like cylnders and what not.

3. When you have the black and white painted out (which turns out dark green and light green in my picture - since I used a green base layer!) it might look messy. Use the smudge tool or even sometimes the blur tool to make it look more refined and neat.

4. With this technique, you can make pretty much any shape you want. When you have mastered the cylinder painting I had as basic example, go and play around with other shapes. Remember - reference is key most of the time.

5. No words.

(Note that I added some white here and there to achieve a shiny effect. It's really simple and REALLY effective!)

Cheers.

[Teancum]

Idk about that, Teancum.... If you messed around with the orientation/saturation/brightness of the colors that could look halfway decent.

Please tell me you're kidding.

[Maveritchell]

Any tool that generates things at semi-random is very helpful for making base textures, a la the "render clouds" tool in Paint.NET. You can use it for a number of things, like brushed metal:

or leather:

or even something fancy like a gemstone:

This is how I start pretty much any base texture when I have to make my own textures.
(And of course the input of a helpful forum can't be overlooked, all the above were made based on tutorials provided by the Paint.NET community.)

[MileHighGuy]

*i sense a faq thread in the forums*
and thanks mav i was just going to ask that
nice tips everybody

the color mode is your friend

Use reference pictures for remakes

[Press_Tilty]

Sorry for the bump, but this is stickied (well, in the FAQs) and I have a valid tip.

If you're using Photoshop, make a new layer and set the opacity to 80% or so. Then you can draw on that layer, and the lower details show through, and it's so much easier then drawing a bunch of things with their own transparency.

It works very well

[FragMe!]

@Press_Tilty
Try playing with layer attributes too, set the the layer to multiply instead of normal, it can achieve similar effects. Very useful if you are working with an ambient occlusion tga base generated from XSI