Unreal Skinning FAQ
Answering your frequently asked questions about
skinning
Contents
What can you tell me about Unreal skins?
How do I make a skin for Epic's Unreal?
What about the palette?
How can I view how a Unreal skin looks over the model?
Additional editing by Krow and Ceptos.
What can you tell me about Unreal skins?
Unreal isn't as custom-skin friendly as other games, this game
has its textures bundled in different categories in several
.UTX files (Unreal Texture), and you have to use a program that
comes with the game (UnrealEd) to insert your skins in the corresponding
.UTX file.
The layout of the model's mapping is very well made, allowing
you to make very detailed skins. They use a 256 colour palette,
but the good thing is that unlike Quake and Quake 2 it isn't
predetermined, so you can make a 24 bit colour skin and then
reduce the colour count to 256.
How do I make a skin for Epic's Unreal?
Of
course you will firstly need some kind of template to start
work. The skinmeshes are available in the files section.
Assuming that you already have a 256 colour .PCX file ready
to be used, you need to insert your skin into a .UTX file. To
do this, open UnrealEd (It's in the Unreal/System directory)
and load the .UTX file where you want to insert your skin into.
Now click "NEW" of the bottom right menu and you'll see a window
where you will want to insert:
The name (put the name you want for your skin)
Package (put the .UTX filename you opened followed by your skin
name without spaces, eg Male2SkinsMySkinName)
Group (set to "none")
Class (set to "texture")
U/V-size (set them both to 256)
Click "Create", as you haven't loaded your skin already you'll
see a black box here, now click "Import" from the menu of the
bottom and select the .PCX file of your skin, and lastly click
save and save it over the original .UTX file.
Now you need to modify the .INT file of the model you made
a skin for to include your skin, open the corresponding one
of the model you made the skin for in the Unreal/system folder
and add the following line after the last one:
Object=(Name=Package.YourSkinName,Class=Texture)
and then save the file, run Unreal and, if all goes well, your
skin should be in the skin selection screen.
What about the palette?
As
I said previously, the Unreal engine doesn't have a predefined
palette, so the skin only needs to have a 256 colour depth as
its only requirement.
How can I view how a Unreal skin looks
over the model?
The UnrealED program itself has a model viewer incorporated.
