Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Custom Skins => Topic started by: bkbandit on April 02, 2006, 12:26:59 AM
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I want to start doing my own skin for my 51, i read the skins page and it went right over my head. SOunded like some computer programming stuff. Could you help me out. I get alot of ideas for skins but i cant bring it to life. Please explain to a knuckle head like me.
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The tutorial has all the info you need it will make sense if you keep reading it. Then try it out first hand
Ill try to simplify it in steps for you.
1.First open the game and select OFFLINE.
2. From the hanger find the DEFAULT skin of the air craft you what to paint.
3. Then right click on the default skin. A menu will open you will see on the bottom SAVE DEFAULT SKIN.
Click that.
4. Now open your aces high main folder and go to skins...... open that.
5 Lets say you picked a spitV you will look for a folder that says........ SpitV.
6. Ok now next to that folder on a blank spot right click and select new/ then folder. (make a folder)not sure how much help ya need so im getting a bit detailed.
7. Now name that folder spitV1 if you paint another spit call the next folder spitV2 and so on.
8. Now into the folder called spitV and find the BMP of the defult skin copy it.(it will be named spitV1)
9. Go back and open the spitV1 folder and paste it in there.
10. Ok now open a text file. Give the new spit your painting a name type the name lets call it "spit test" close the folder it will ask you to save.. save it.
11. Now rename that text file spitV.
12. You are ready to paint . open your favorite paint program and do your thing.
13. when your done save it as a BMP @ 256 colors, that will give you a 1 meg file.
14. drop that file into your new spitV1 folder making sure you named the BMP spitV1
15. Then go in the hanger OFFLINE and find it it will be calle "test spit "because thats what you named it in the tex file spitV.
that's it.
I would recommend that you downloaded the 1024x tex pack that you will fined were you read about skins. print this out and go step by step and you see that it's very simple once you do it.
I hope I was clear.... if not feel free to PM me
~S~ RaVe
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thanks alot
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Thanks 4 the step by step helped me tons.. thank you raven. BUT.......now here is the problem im haveing. Im useing the crapy paint program that comes with the pc and when i shrink the pics to fit them on the plane they get distorted to the point where it isnt easy to make out. how do i get around this??
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I don't know a thing about "PAINT" im the wrong guy on that one.
I do know its best if you start with images that are close to the size you need instead of reducing them.
if you want to put stars and bars on that mustang of yours I would suggest finding some pre made markings
Try this link (http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/colours/markings.html)
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bkbandit got to some where like paintshop and get there free trial sample,u gt i think 3 months to use it before you have to pay or not pay.
you will make life easier for u
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It just ran out lol. I was saying that all last nite, i had paint shop pro 8 or something like that.
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Frankly, you cannot use MS Paint to make skins. It doesn't have the options needed. You *could* make skins with it, but it will take 1000x the effort and will look 1/1000th as good in the end.
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Also note, the P51D's slots are all filled. We have a limnit of 15 custom skins per plane. However, if a skin is good enough and different enough it will get rotated around with the others. Not often, but it can happen.
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WHat program should i use to make skins??
I dont want to submit any skins to htc, i just want my ride to have its own look.
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Heard Gimp is a good freeware one.
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Krusty said:
MS Paint ... You *could* make skins with it, but it will take 1000x the effort and will look 1/1000th as good in the end.
This is most definitely the case. I made my 1st skin with MS paint, and it was a complete and total *****, and looked like crap. You have to do all anti-aliasing by hand and eyeball, 1 pixel at a time, without benefit of layers. I cannot advise against attempting this strongly enough. But I was happy enough with the result to want to do more skins, and thus could justify dropping the $$$ for a real editor.
But that's the rub: you don't know until you've made a skin whether you'll enjoy the process enough to justify the expense of a real editor. So my advice to you is either get a trial version of Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, or try that free Gimp thing I've heard about but never used. Make a skin with one of these, and if you enjoy it enough to want to do another, you'll be cool with spending the money on a real editor.
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Originally posted by bkbandit
WHat program should i use to make skins??
I dont want to submit any skins to htc, i just want my ride to have its own look.
Did you know that you can only use the skins you make offline?
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So i cant make my own skin and use it online. I though u could make a custom skin for "your" own planes. I though u only submit skins if you where that good at makeing them and wanted to share them with the rest of ah.
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yea you cant make one and use it online unless HTC accepts it
only off line
:(
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gimp? where can i find that? is it hard to use?
So if i submit the skin i and they say ok i can use it online? How does it work? Will i be competiting with 1000 other stang skins? I just want this for my plane.
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Has to be a historical WWII combat unit skin that meets this (http://www.hitechcreations.com/ahhelp/skins.html) list of criteria.
And we already have a full Pony skin set.
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That sucks...i though i could hook up my on custom skin on the plane, now i have to be historically correct and submit it in and hope to beat out 100s of others, looks like this is a waste of time. Since i spend enuff time in the 51 i wanted it to look like "my" 51. why dont htc let us use our on skins online without it being historically correct or submitting it. I want my own paint job
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1) Historically correct - Well it is a WW2 game, so this makes sense.
2) 100's of others - Naw, just a small group of us, prob less than 10 who do them regularly.
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that sucks that we cant have custom paint. I have mine alittle less then half done, i want to able to turn off my id but people still noe who i am. I understand you have to be historically correct but you could make yourself crazy makeing it 100% correct. If we cant customize the skins to our own personal taste i really dont see the point. Raven did a bad bellybutton 109 and i dont see why if it aint historically correct he shouldnt be able to fly with it. And its funny cause ever since i started this topic i have been looking on the internet at nose art and theres alot of naked women and also to truly be historically correct the absence of the proper nazi markings, the swastika(i understand that there offensive but there where on german planes aswell as american fighters that scored agaisnt them), so with the absence of these images i dont really think you could be 100% correct. My question to htc is "why not let me have my own skins". As long as there are no curse words or offensive images i dont see the harm in it. what do you guys think. For the time being ima finish my skin.
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I think the feeling of immersion would be lost if we were seeing all mater of designs on skins like images of Budweiser logos or lime green wings ect.
It would end up looking like the "LAND OF OZ" around here.
So to maintain some since of a historical feeling they want the skins to have schemes from that time period. one that actually existed.
~S~ RaVe
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im pretty sure with a couple of guide line it could work. I think the majority wont even bother with it and the ones that do bother a percent of that will be the morons trying to have a solid colored purple spitfire. I pretty sure with certain guide lines it could be done.
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Skuzzy,
You know that not every plane will have 15 skins right, so why not let the P51-D have more ?
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Originally posted by bkbandit
im pretty sure with a couple of guide line it could work. I think the majority wont even bother with it and the ones that do bother a percent of that will be the morons trying to have a solid colored purple spitfire. I pretty sure with certain guide lines it could be done.
Can't because there are ove 3000+ players. The skins already take up about 1.5 megs (think that's what Skuzzy said). Can you imagine how much 3000+ skins would take up. Find a historical skin you like and make that your own, well if HTC accepts it that is.
Bronk
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The point of a skin is that everybody sees it, not only you. Some games allow you to replace the "default" skin on your end so that you see something different. That's not exactly how AH works.
With AH everybody sees the skin you have, and so they have to download it. HTC approves (or rejects) skin submissions, then puts them on the server. They automatically download to players and get put into the skins drop box in the hangar clipboard.
Now, every skin takes up resources. Especially for folks that pre-load textures into memory. If every person had their own outlandish personalized skin and every person were using them, then every player of this game would need something on the order of 5 terabits of RAM just to run the game. A terabit is a thousand GB.
It's just not smart. Not to mention most of these folks are going to take the same base skin and just crudely add guady noseart or add their own name, or bright pink lightning bolts (for the LA7 drivers).
It totally detracts from the environment, the environment can't support it, and at least with HTC approving the skins we have some level of quality control (that is, the skins don't out-and-out suck).
Submitting skins to HTC isn't so much about flying them yourself, it's about providing them for others to fly, in my opinion.
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Originally posted by bkbandit
gimp? where can i find that? is it hard to use?
If you're a Graphics neophyte, yes.
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Besides Bronk's point about 3000+ players, the older, non-updated, 3D models have the ability to use a "transparent" color. (A text file would hold the id number of the color in your skin's bmp that would be transparent. The updated models generally do not use this feature but it still might work.) Therefore, players could make their planes invisible.
I see Krusty just posted about some games allowing you to use your own skins in place of the defaults. This is something that would not work in AH as long as transparent colors are used. For example, a player could make their wings transparent and improve their view. Or maybe they could even remove the canopy frame and cockpit giving an even better view.
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Good points on enhancing your own view, MachNix
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I think you nailed it Krusty -
I make skins not just for me, but for the use and enjoyment of other players.
In fact a lot of mine are requests.
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MachNix said:
Besides Bronk's point about 3000+ players, the older, non-updated, 3D models have the ability to use a "transparent" color. (A text file would hold the id number of the color in your skin's bmp that would be transparent. The updated models generally do not use this feature but it still might work.) Therefore, players could make their planes invisible.
You don't need a transparent color. Just save the skins in any format greater than 256 colors, and they're invisible in the game.