reskinning the player models


gremlin_mischief
06-21-2006, 04:17 AM
Could someone please point me in the direction of a tutorial that will tell me what to do to reskin the dod source player models. I've never done it before, and have no idea what to do. To give you an idea of what I want to accomplish... I want to make the only visible part of the models the head. Yes, the head. Or at least most of the body transparent. I don't mind seeing the weapon's. I figure if all i can see on my enemy for a while is their head, that will get me in the groove of aimin' for the head after a while. Thanks for any help.

Staker500
06-21-2006, 10:13 AM
thats like hacking, so i doubt anyone will help you

Genie
06-21-2006, 12:06 PM
I don't really see how it's exploiting. Only being able to see the head would make things much harder, not easier. That's a pretty neat idea gremlin, and I can imagine it working pretty well after a while.

I'm not too familiar with transparency and alphas and such, but I believe there is a way to do what you want. I can't remember exactly, but you can make an alpha layer on the texture, and make whatever you want transparent by filling the area with either pure white or pure black, then saving the vtf with transparency settings. I had to mess with alphas when I edited a sniper scope a while back. Gimmie a little while and I'll see if I can figure it out or find a tutorial.

Edit 2 - Allright, I changed some vmt settings, and now we're a bit closer... There are still some "gaps", but they're only visible up real close.

http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/8045/lol27jr.jpg

Anyone good with vmt settings?

gremlin_mischief
06-21-2006, 02:33 PM
cool, thanks for the help genie. I'm glad to see it is actually possible! And you're right, I know it would make it harder, probably almost useless at a distance. I still need at least a basic tutorial to even know how to make this work though. Like, when you say vmt settings, I have no idea what that means. lol.

*edit*
Okay, I found this:
1) get gfcscape extract the file
2) download vtf2tga and convert the vtf to a tga file
3)open up photoshop edit it
4) export it and stick it ingame
And then someone mentioned a plug-in for photoshop from the maker of gfcscape that lets you open vtf files and saves them directly from photoshop - which avoids all of the converting stuff listed above.
Does this sound like what I need to do? This was to edit HL2 skins, not DOD:S skins. Also, I have no idea where the original skins are to edit. If you've actually done this already, would you be able to send me the files? If not, I can have a go at it, assuming I can figure out where the original files to edit are. Thanks for the help!

Wile E Coyote
06-21-2006, 03:48 PM
Awhle back I originally tried making part of the equipment skin a transparency, specifically the bullets around the neck on the MG. (I wanted the sapce between the individual bullets to be trasparent). It didn't get come up with an "consistency error" but it di make a bunch of other reflective surfaces in the map go wacky, so I dropped the idea. I might have been doing something wrong.

And no, I have no idea how making 3/4ths of your target invisible is gonna help you cheat. If anything it would make you game real difficult LOL

Genie
06-21-2006, 04:48 PM
I spent 25 minutes on this post :(

Well, tried it out in-game and I was promptly spat back out for model consistency. Sorry but I don't think you can get this to work in-game. Your best bet is to just fill the entire skin with black and leave the face/helmet alone so that you'll still be attracted towards the head.

Sorry man, I'm kinda bummed that it didn't work.

Wile E Coyote
06-21-2006, 06:41 PM
Ya know, actually that would work pretty good. And it definitely is the easiest route.

Originally posted by Genie
Your best bet is to just fill the entire skin with black and leave the face/helmet alone so that you'll still be attracted towards the head.

gremlin_mischief
06-22-2006, 01:22 AM
Horray! I have it all done. I tried black at first... but noticed that it stood out way too much on the maps. I found that doing their bodies in all white except for the head/helmet was better because the white was harder to see on most maps. I think this will actually be better than having transparent bodies because a floating head would be REALLY hard to spot... where as the white body is harder to see, but not completely invisible, and takes no attention away from the head. This should be interesting to play with. haha

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