elfie's guide to skinning wrote:Greetings my friends! I assume that if you are reading this then you want to learn the art of skinning, no pun intended. Someone just recently posted that they want to learn how to skin and that none of the tutorials worked so here is one that hopefully will work. You will need a good program to do this like GIMP. Search it on google and download it. First let's start off with something easy to skin, like the rep side. Copy the rep and common side to your sides folder. Go to the rep's msh folder and open rep_inf_ep3trooper.tga with GIMP. Now get the color tools and skin away! When you are satisfied go to file new. Make the new file 512 by 512 pixels and press ok. Now you have a new blank file. Go to layer and click delete layer. Your file now looks like a chess board. Then go back to layer and click new layer. make sure the layer is 512 by 512 pixels. Now go back to the original clone skin you had and under edit click copy. Now go back to your blank skin and under edit click paste. Then go to layer and click anchor layer. Now save it as rep_inf_ep3trooper.tga and where it says all images, change that to targa file or tga. click save and yes you want to replace.
Now turn OFF RLE Compression! when your skin is saved you go to your clone wars lua and put dc: infront of side\rep. thank you for reading and hope this helps. Please post for comments/suggestions

Caleb1117 wrote:Bear with me, this could be painstaking, but I promise you, it gets easier. Well, alittle anyway.

Ok for the purpose of this tutorial, I will assume you have a functioning map in SWBF2 already. If not, then get cracking.
Now some of you may want to just edit a shipped side, but in this tut I’ll be teaching how to make a completely new one. It works pretty much the same way, except with a shipped side, your doing a lot more little patch work. Making small additions to get stuff working, but if you know the whole process, then you’ll know all the little things that are needed.
And… uhm Its just the way I’m doing so thar.

First decide what you want your side to be called, traditionally, they are something with only 3 characters, like ALL, IMP, or CIS, but this doesn’t have to be, you can name your side anything, I know of no limits.
So lets say, your making this for a super duper stormie trooper, you could name you side SDST... I suddenly find that anacronim annoying, so I won’t use it, the example side name will be: PMS >.> What?

Ok, so make a folder in Data_ABC/Sides, and name it PMS (IE whatever your side name is)
And then inside it, make a: effects, odf, msh, req, and MUNGED folders
(note that the MUNGED folder doesn’t need to be in caps, it just typically is.)
So it now looks like this:



Now go get the assets for your unit.
(make sure you only copy the original assets, and not modify them.)
This means get the all the TGAs, MSHs, weapon ODFs, and the unit’s ODF, that you want/need.

All MSHs and TGAs go in your sides msh folder, ODFs in the odf folder, etc.

If the unit you are changing is a Jedi, look in his sides MUNGED folder, and find grab all the files with his name on it, there should be one .anims, one .zaabin, and one .zafbin, move these into your sides MUNGED folder

Lets take another trip to the assets.
Go to Assets/Sides, and copy the common side to your Data_ABC/Sides.
If the tur side is in your Data_ABC/Sides, you can delete that, unless you plan on having turrets in your map at some point.

Ok, now to make the .reqs which stands for Required Files, every unit, vehicle, or hero (and even a few other things) in a side needs one, and then, the side itself needs one.
They are text files, and really easy to set up.

Ok first your unit(s) req.
Go into your side’s req folder, and make a text file, you should name it whatever then name of your unit is. So if your unit is called pms_inf_supr_tropr You should call the req file pms_inf_supr_tropr.req. Now its handy to look at a shipped .req, so you go do that, I’ll wait.






Done? Its really quite simple.
I suggest you just copy the text out of a shipped req, and paste it into your own and change the text about the unit. If you don’t understand, then you didn’t look.

That is a unit req, just copy it, and change the unit name to yours, req names must match that of the unit’s odf.
Save your new .req file, and that’s done.
Hit back, and go to your sides main directory, you remember, this place:

And make another text file, this will be the side’s req, give it the same name as your side, so it would be (in my example) pms.req.
Again, let’s look at a shipped side req.
Here is the imperial one:

Cluttered looking isn’t it?
Basically, it just lists all the units, vehicles, and heroes etc
So copy one of the shipped side reqs into yours, and delete all the little units and such in quotes Except The “lvl” thing at the top of the list, then add your unit in so it looks like this:


And save it.
Your side should now be a bit more something like this:

(Ignore those .bat files, they weren't supposed to be there)

Just 2 things left

Go to Data_ABC/_BUILD/Sides and make a new folder for your side, this is where, the half munged side bits will go on their glorious metamorphosis into a .lvl file.
(if you don’t know what metamorphosis is, perhaps you’re to young to mod)

So, make a folder named PMS, then go to one of the other side folders in there, Data_ABC/_BUILD/Sides/ALL for example, and find two files called clean.bat and munge.bat, paste a copy of those two .bat files, into Data_ABC/_BUILD/Sides/PMS.

Last step adding your unit to the lua script.

Go to Data_ABC/Common/scripts/ABC there should be a bunch of files here, .lua and .bak.

The baks are just luas with their file extension changed, and are “backups” of the default luas.
You can delete these, I do.

Now you need to find the lua you want. The unit we’re talking about is a soldier, so lets put him in conquest.
Lua names start with your map name ABC then either a c for CW era, or g for GCW era.
And then the mode
con = Conquest
eli = Hero Assault
ctf = Capture the Flag
1flag = 1 Flag Capture the Flag

So lets put him in the GCW era, so find your ABCg_con.lua and open it, it’s a notepad file.

First scroll down and find this part.


This area of the lua loads a unit’s data into the game for use.
Again, we’re just going to kinda copy and paste a shipped bit.
Take the imp section, copy all of it and paste it again, in that section, change the lvl name from imp.lvl to pms.lvl, and put a dc: in front of SIDE, but before the parentheses, this dc: tells the lua that it is loading a custom file.

(if you where editing a shipped side, you would need to add a dc: to it’s load section too.)

And delete all the listed units, except for the top one, and change the name to your unit’s.
And close it off with a )
It should look a bit like this:


Now if you where adding more units, you would have to add comma’s like so:


Ok, now scroll down to the unit line up.
This bit:


Now if you could replace one of the normal unit’s with yours, but I’ll teach you how to add a new one, incase you don’t want to replace anyone, and hurt a trooper's feelings.

Under the SetHeroClass part, add this:

AddUnitClass(IMP, "pms_inf_supr_troopr",1,4)

This will add your unit under the Imperial side’s line up.

So now you’ve got this:

Good? Good.

Caleb1117 wrote:Now we munge.
Go to: Data_ABC/_Build and click Modtools VisualMunge.exe.
Check the common box, and select your side from the drop down Sides menu.

dc?

    ReadDataFile("SIDE\\rep.lvl",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_rifleman",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_rocketeer",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_engineer",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_sniper",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_officer",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_jettrooper",
                             "rep_hover_fightertank",
                             "rep_hero_anakin",
                             "rep_hover_barcspeeder")

    ReadDataFile("dc:SIDE\\rep.lvl",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_rifleman",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_rocketeer",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_engineer",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_sniper",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_officer",
                             "rep_inf_ep3_jettrooper",
                             "rep_hover_fightertank",
                             "rep_hero_anakin",
                             "rep_hover_barcspeeder")

MasterSaitek009 wrote:So you want a way too make the file size smaller? How would you like to do this?
There are few ways.

(A.

Hidden/Spoiler:

With this method you can use textures, models, weapons and more from a preexisting .LVL side. For this example let's use the Default Rep side and the Anakin unit.

[quote="Saitek"]1. Create a new unit ODF and corresponding REQ.

2. Put this code at the top of the new ODF[code][GameObjectClass]
ClassParent = "rep_hero_anakin" [/code] This makes the new unit a hierarchical child of "rep_hero_anakin". As such it inherits all of it's properties (speed, weapons, model, sound etc.)from the anakin unit. You can change any setting in the new odf and it will simply override the parent classes setting.

2. Now, go into your Lua and put [code]ReadDataFile("SIDE\\rep.lvl",
"rep_hero_anakin") [/code] at the bottom of the ReadDataFile section

3. Now put this line,
[code]ReadDataFile("dc:SIDE\\whateveryoursideis.lvl",
"whatever_you_namedyourunit") [/code]
right after the line from step 2.

4. Now, for testing purposes, set the Republic hero to "whatever_you_namedyourunit".