Skinning in The Frozen Throne
Tutorial by MantisScreamer
1. Intro
2. Things needed
3. Getting started
4. Editing the skin
5. Testing the skin
6. Misc. and comments
A skin is a simple covering for a 3d model. Skins are used with just about every type of 3d model, so if you plan on doing computer art, I suggest you get good at skinning. Skinning is just changing the way a 3d model looks on the outside. You can make simple modifications to a skin, or redesign it completely. In this tutorial, I will teach the basics of skinning for the average beginner.
You will need 2 programs, as well as The Frozen Throne to edit skins. The first one is any type of paint program that can open .tga (targa) files. I suggest you use Adobe Photoshop 5.0 or higher; Jasc Paint Shop pro works also. You also need one of these two programs: Wc3 Image Extractor, or Warcraft 3 Viewer. Either of these will suffice, but I find Wc3IE quicker to work with. Both of these programs can be downloaded at www.wc3campaigns.com and you can find the listed paint programs by searching in google.
The first thing you need to do is open up your extractor program (Wc3IE or Wc3V). You can get Wc3IE here: http://www.infoceptor.com/files/war3/imageextractor.zip Once you open the program, select Open , Archive(Mpq) and click on it.
You will be brought up with an average open file screen. Navigate yourself to the Warcraft3 Folder and select Either War3.mpq or War3x.mpq. War3 contains all the skins form RoC while War3x contains all the files from TFT. If Wc3IE gives you an error when you load up, you either didn't open the mpq or your downloaded file was corrupted. Once you open the file, you will see Titles such as Abilities, Buildings, Doodads, and Textures. Select the Textures title and the bar will drop down with many pathname selections. Click on the first one, which should be called Abomination.blp.
A picture of a weird looking Abomination should appear in the right corner of your screen. Right click the file, then push save. It will automatically have it saved as a .tga (it should automatically save as a tga).
When you save your images its nice to have a sub-folder in your war3 directory to put all of your images in. With Wc3V it is pretty much the same to extract a file. When Wc3V opens up, a treeview window will appear. It will currently display the treeview for MDX files (model files), so change that to .blp files. Select textures, then abomination. Right click it and it will say Extract and convert .blp. Save it as a .tga and you're done.
The next thing you need to do is open your paint program. Open your .tga files and make a simple color change. Say I want to make the Abomination have green and yellow skin. I find the appropriate colors, make my changes, and save the .tga.
IMPORTANT- The resolution you save it as must be 32bits. This part takes the longest for experienced users, so just do some obvious color changing for now.
Open up your Wc3IE or Wc3V and open your file. This is where I like Wc3IE because I don't see any way to open up a .tga file with Wc3V. Once your file is opened, it should show you the modified picture of the abomination.
Go to file; then save as. Save it as a .blp file and open up world edit. Go to the import manager (Module, Import manager) and input your file. Double click on your file and it should display a little box with some info in it. Click the open box to change the filename, and change the name to Textures\Abombination.blp.
Make sure you use a backwards \ (above enter key), and that your importing your .blp file, not the .tga. The file path varies with each unit, so if you want to know the file path of a skin just type in the name for it in Wc3IE and it will show any .blps with the name in it. Make sure the file path is correct and place the unit in WE. Run test the map to make sure the skin works.
IMPORTANT- The skin will not show up in WE until the map is saved and re-opened.
There are a few extra things to know about. First, you can make certain parts of the skin become transparent, thus they don't appear in game. This is known as alpha editing. There are a few varied ways to alpha edit, but for Adobe Photoshop 7.0 just use the lasso tool, then go to Layer, Layer Mask, and Remove Selection.
Then go back there but instead of pushing Layer Mask select Remove Layer Mask and push apply.
This is how you alpha edit, it is a bit different for other programs but the concept is pretty much the same. IMPORTANT- If some parts of the skin are alpha-ed out then some parts of the model are shown incorrectly. Also, some parts of the war3 models are alpha-ed out, so if you paint over an alpha area, you may see some extra color in-game. I hope you found this tutorial useful, and if you have any questions you can e-mail me at MantisScreamer@hotmail.com