BOD Scripting

Textures -> Skins tutorial by Tom Triffic

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OK I need to make a tutorial up for the group that wants to edit skins.
Here is the best way to go about it I have found and can serve as a tutorial,
I would recommend regardless of the character you want to do pulling the BMP's from the mmp and I do mean pulling. It is a bit of work but I have found an easy way. Even if you use the templates they provide it is essential to see just how they work the texture over the mesh. I will admit it is a bit difficult on some characters to figure out just how the mesh is covered. If we could figure out the export to 3ds max and then to an unwrap we'd be in business, Ill work on that.

OK Say you want to put your face in place of Ragnar, I did this with Commodus and it can be found on a link from a prior post, I also have one which contains a full skin of Maximus which I need to tweak. OK the thing to do is.


1-> Open BAB.exe,close the console for now as you wont need it. then go Go to the folder Icon up top and then go to the BOD/CHaracters dir., Open the .mmp file you want that corresponds with the character( Note you can open multiple in the same window,) then after you open them double click on the name. That will show the pic to the right.
i.e. rag_a is Ragnar's front. After you open it do a print screen.

2-> Open PhotoSHop, If you dont have it well something else might work but PS is golden for this , paste the screen capture in PS.Then what you do is go back to BAB and go to your next texture,Printscreen and Go back to PS and paste. Do all of the bmp's from the character you want to edit this same way, The great thing is PS will paste them all exactly the same and layered for you.

3-> OK now you have them all in Photoshop. You want to use your crop tool and put a box as close as you can around the bmp picture, It seems small I know but it is the right size(256x256) Then crop exactly around the edges which really isnt that tough with this small an image. Just check your image size and be sure its the right size.

4-> OK now they are all cropped, A beautiful thing as it took me a few shots to figure out pasting them all. Now edit each layer as you want it. I personally when doing the ones they provided the template for always have that as a background and then I reduce the opacity of the layer I'm working on to see how it lays out on the Poly's.
OK perform your magic, It will probably take you some tweaking to get your stuff just how you like it and I have been tweaking forever on different ones.

5-> once you have each image as you want it say rag_a save a copy as a bmp and name it the same as in the bab editor.(Thats important) then after you save all your bmp's your ready to put them in the game.

6-> you need to write up a little file that the Bab console will recognize and create your mmp with, ALSO (PLEASE BACK UP YOUR ORIGINAL MMP FIRST) OK here is an example of the .py script I made to put Commodus and actually myself too in the game as Ragnar.

import BaBx 

s1=BaBx.BitmapData("RAG_A","rag_a.bmp",1) 
s2=BaBx.BitmapData("RAG_A_W","rag_a_w.bmp",1) 
s3=BaBx.BitmapData("RAG_B","rag_b.bmp",1) 
s4=BaBx.BitmapData("RAG_B_W","rag_b_w.bmp",1) 

l1=[s1,s2,s3,s4]

BaBx.ProcessBitmaps(l1) 

OK when making your own the S*= the skins and as you can see they are named accordingly and most are simple with an A or a 1 and then a W for wounded.
You put the name as it was in BAB and it IS case snsitive and then your file name.Then below the l1 = I believe stands for the layers as some characters have multiple layers of skins,
Then the process BMPS.

6-> OK the example I have includes you having the BAB files in the same directory as the BAB.exe icon. You can do it other ways but I find this works fine. You will then type the following commands in BAB's console depending on your Skin.


execfile("ragnar.py")


you can name the py what ever you want but when you save in notepad be sure you save like this , ragnar.py. and select save as all types otherwise you'll get a txt extension on the end.

OK that will load your BMPS(OH yah the py file must be in the same dir. as everything else)

then after they load put in (The name must be the same as the mmp file in the game!)


BaBx.SaveFile("rgn.mmp")


OK that will create your MMP file.

then just take that file and replace the one in the BOD/characters directory and your golden.
I checked mine over my lan to see what the front looks like but JOSH has since created bots that you can apply to that can be seen in game.

I hope that helped the community and can make one with screenshots if you guys think it would be better,Also keep in mind the Armor factor be sure to see which characters have armor covering areas you plan to paint Or youll be like me who edited the Traitor Knight only to find my face covered with armor.

Well Good Luck all, I'd love to see some nice skins develop and I will continue to work on them and figuring out the modelling.

Tom


p.s. - Tom, if youre lurking around and read this, i'm sure we would all like to hear from you... you sorta dropped out of the Blade scene all at once - but your boundless enthusiasm is very welcome here :)