How to re-skin a model

[shaun_amos]

im wondering how to re-skin a model
or even just skin a model

[ShaDoW]

Extract the UV maps and paint over them I guess.

Skinning a model can be quite a tedious process though, sometimes getting the UV map ready takes even longer than creating the actual mode itself.

To put it in explanatory words; you have to "cut open" the model, so that you can smear it out over a flat plane. Then you paint over the polygons and then wrap it around the model again.

[shaun_amos]

ya i just wanna reskin a book, im actually just gonna try and make my own book model, wont be hard and will give help me get more comfortable with milkshape

[shaun_amos]

well fuck milkshape, could someone please explain the process of reskining a model

[Jest@]

see tutorials section - I posted a tut in there about this ages ago

The method I use there is the reeally reeally careful method, to make sure you don't overwrite/conflict with any files. Bit of legwork, but not too bad. Just readt the tut all the way through before you start.

[shaun_amos]

could you give me the name of the thread or perhaps a link, cause i cant find what i think im looking for

[Jest@]

Oops - I never made that tut, lol!! I only made the far less useful, but quite similar, re-scaling tut. (which is worth looking at for this as well)

Right, to re-skin a model you do this:

-Extract the model with GCFScape

-Decompile it with CannonFodder's Decompiler (decompile to a fodler you can easily get to)

-Open up the freshly decompiled .qc file wih notepad, and see where the model's materials are. (it'll have a line near the top listing directories)

- Find & Extract those materials (the VMTs and the VFTs)

-Edit the VTFs as required (there's a photoshop VTF plugin on Nem's Tools).

-Re-save the VTFs and put them in a subfolder of the folder they originally came from (so, for example, if the original textures were in hl2/materials/models/HEVsuit/ in GCFScape, then make a folder at hl2/materials/models/HEVsuit/MySkin/ or something)

-Put the VMTs in there as well, and edit the VMts to point to the new folder (just adding one word, not hard)

-Then edit the .qc to point to the new folder too. Also change the $modelname line of the QC to point to a similarly-made subfolder.

-Then compile the .qc file (run it through studiomdl)


Basically, what we're doing is making a new model a subfolder down from the original, and pointing it to materials that are a subfolder down from the originals.

I'm not going into the details of how to compile a model, edit the textures etc etc cos that's all covered elsewhere. Hope this gives you the correct idea.