Unreal Tournament Skinning FAQ
Answering your frequently asked questions about
skinning
Contents
What can you tell me about UT skins?
How do I make a skin for Epic's Unreal Tournament?
What about the palette?
How can I view how a UT skin looks over the model?
Additional editing by Krow and Ceptos.
What can you tell me about Unreal
Tournament skins?
Unreal Tournament skinning is very much like Unreal's, but
this one supports multiple images for a skin, so you can make
much more detailed skins. The palette is still 256 undefined
colours, but you can have 256 different colours on each image
of the skin, so you almost don't have to worry about colours.
When UT was announced, I had the hope that this new Unreal
would have a better skin support, but seems like the Epic guys
do not notice us skinners very much, and they used the same
damn method of the .UTX and the .INT files.
How do I make a skin for Epic's Unreal
Tournament?
Grab yourself the skin meshes and get painting. The skinmeshes
are available in the files section. When you have finished the
skin, chop it into 256X256 pixel images if you were working
with a large image.
Assuming that you have the 3 or 4 256-colour PCX files of your
skin, you'll also need a 5th 64 x 64 image of your skin's head
for the game to put on the hud.
Name your images with a 4 digit name and a number. Using the
example "skin" name your skins: skin1.pcx, skin2.pcx, skin3.pcx
and skin4.pcx and the 64 x 64 image skin5.pcx. If you've made
multiple faces for your skin, you have to name them the following
way (assuming that "skin4.pcx" is the head), skin4NAME-OF-THE-FACE.pcx.
You'll need multiple face icons too, name them (assuming that
"skin5.pcx" is the head icon) skin5NAME-OF-THE-FACE.pcx.
You can also have team colours in Unreal Tournment. These colours
are Red, Blue, Green and Yellow. Only 2 textures on the skin
can have team colours, and they are named as follows (using
the male soldier model as an example)
skin1.pcx
= base chest/ back
skin1t_0.pcx = Red team version of chest/ back
skin1t_1.pcx = Blue team version of chest/ back
skin1t_2.pcx = Green team version of chest/ back
skin1t_3.pcx = Yellow team version of chest/ back
skin2.pcx = base legs/boots
skin2t_0.pcx = Red team version of legs/ boots
skin2t_1.pcx = Blue team version of legs/ boots
skin2t_2.pcx = Green team version of legs boots
skin2t_3.pcx = Yellow team version of legs/ boots
skin3.pcx = base arms/ shoulder pads
skin4.pcx = base face/ hair/ neck/ headset/ hand/ boot bottom
skin4Johnson.pcx = a face called Johnson, which will show up in
the face selction menu.
skin5Johnson.pcx = a 64x64 portrait of Johnson's face used in
the HUD when Johnson talks.
Now you're ready to go inserting your skin in the game, open
UnrealEd, make sure "Textures" is selected in the top right
menu, if it is, click on NEW on the bottom right menu, this
makes a new texture container file, name the file whatever you
want, it doesn't matter 'cause you'll delete it anyway, and
hit OK, now click "Import" and select your skin's images and
hit OK, now you have your skins in the container file, click
"Save" now you have to name the file with the model you skinned
followed by your skin name, for example SoldierSkins_SkinName,
on the Textures directory.
Now you need to make a .INT file to tell UT how the texture
should be used, open notepad and add the following lines:
[public]
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin1,Class=Texture,Description="A
Description")
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin2,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin3,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin4,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin5,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin1t_0,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin1t_1,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin2t_0,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin2t_1,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin3t_0,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin3t_1,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin4t_0,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin5t_1,Class=Texture)
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin1Johnson,Class=Texture,Description="Johnson")
Object=(Name=[texture pack name].skin5Johnson,Class=Texture
The INT file should be saved in the /System directory under
Unreal Tournament.
What about the palette?
Unreal Tournament, like Unreal, doesn't have a specific palette,
but the images of the skins must have a 256 colour depth, just
make each part of the skin in 24 bits, and then reduce it to
256, and you can also use 256 DIFFERENT colours in each image
of the skin, so you don't have to worry very much about colours.
How can I view how a Unreal Tournament
skin looks over the model?
Check out the files
section for UT model viewers.
