Question about skins etc.

[frau kaleun]

I brought this up in a thread ages ago but I can't find it now that I'm ready to work on it.

I have a 7B/7C skin that I love, but when I first used it I got this:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/picture.php?albumid=163&pictureid=1590

I looked at some other skins that I'd downloaded and saw they had a file called mask_type7.tga that was missing in the one I was using. So I found another Type VII skin that had that file and messed with the colors on it until I got it a satisfactory result and added that edited file into the skin I was using.

BUT - and I can't find a screenshot to illustrate this - there is still a little bit of the deck forward of what shows in that pic above that is not "covered" and is the light grey color that you get with an unskinned boat.

So... how do I fix this? I know someone talked about what might need to be changed in that thread where I mentioned it before, but at the time I had no idea what they were talking about so nothing they said stuck and now I can't find the thread again.

Thanks for any help! I love this skin but that little strip of light grey decking on my beautiful black boat drives me cray-cray.

[Bakkels]

I don't know which particular skin you're using, and how it's unwrapped. But I looked a the standard .tga file for the type VII deck, and that light strip you are talking about is a copied piece of those triangular segments at the front and rear of the deck. If those areas have a light color, so will that strip in the middle of the deck.

That might not be very clear, so here are some screens I made.
First I made a darker hull and drew two lines on the segments I was referring to:
http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/4082/typeviitest.jpg

And here is how that translates to the 3d model. (Shown in s3ditor)
http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/8364/typeviitest3d.jpg

If you look closely, you see parts of the red line in that strip there. Don't know if this is any help at all but anyway..
If you can't solve it, you can also send the skin to me and I'll see if I can get it right. As you helped me on a number of occasions it's the least I can do ;)

[frau kaleun]

Well any information is helpful, so thanks.

That looks like the NSS_Uboatx_deck.tga file, correct?

In the skin I'm using, that bit across the middle for the triangular segments of deck is the right dark color to go with the rest of the skin.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/picture.php?albumid=158&pictureid=4132

If there's something about the way they're positioned, it's not something I'm seeing at first glance.

I should mention that the readme for the skin says it's for the 7 B/C but I haven't tried it with the C, so it's possible it works fine there but not for the B.

Here's the skin in question:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=891

As noted above it doesn't include a mask_type7.tga but I made one using another version of that file and everything but one little slice at the forward end of that light grey strip is now properly skinned. But something is not matching up somehow.



Edit: OMG we may have started down the path of me making skins. NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! I'll never play the game again if that happens. :wah: :O:

[frau kaleun]

Holy crap you can export embedded images out of the .dat files. :doh:

Which I just did, the same .tga for the deck, and part of that section in the middle that we're talking about is "off" by about 15 pixels.

[Bakkels]

:hmmm: Well I just looked at the skin (applied to the VIIB to be sure) and I don't see anything wrong with it in s3ditor. Do you have s3ditor by the way? If it looks normal to you in the 3d model preview than perhaps something in-game makes it look different.
If I have the time I'll have a look ingame tomorrow.

[frau kaleun]

:hmmm: Well I just looked at the skin (applied to the VIIB to be sure) and I don't see anything wrong with it in s3ditor. Do you have s3ditor by the way? If it looks normal to you in the 3d model preview than perhaps something in-game makes it look different.
If I have the time I'll have a look ingame tomorrow.

Yeah, I'm in there right now. But I don't know how to do what you're talking about.

[Bakkels]

If you got s3ditor fired up you go to /data/submarine/nssuboat7b and open the nss_uboat7b.dat file.

Then on the tree like structure on the left you click the '+' next to the 'NSS_Uboat7c_deck.tga'
Click 'embedded image' and in the right of the screen click 'import'.
Then select the NSS_Uboat7c_deck.tga from the BlackBoat skin folder (wherever you have that stored).

After that, select 'Node - NSS_Uboat7b' on the left. Now in the right of the screen click 'model preview' (I have been struggling for hours when I first got s3ditor before I realised you could actually click 'model preview' :) ) and a 3d model appears. There are four light-bulb symbols above it. Click the left one and presto; you see your skin on the model. You can move it around with the mouse and arrow keys and zoom in and all.

Naturally, if you want to view the hull too, follow the same steps but then for the 'NSS_Uboat7c_hull' in the tree structure.

[frau kaleun]

First time I found the Model Preview, thanks! Very cool.

So I've imported both the hull.tga and the deck.tga from the skin, and the light strip is still there as in the screenshot above.

Everything is "skinned" except the triangular sections aft and stern, and the light strip just fore of the tower as in the screenshot above.

Somehow applying the mask gets rid of most of it, but I'm wondering if it's that ~15 pixel difference I've noticed in the skin's deck .tga vs the original GWX one that is the culprit as far as what's left over not being taken care of.

Well I will do some experimenting and see what happens.

Thanks for all your help!

[Bakkels]

Are you sure you didn't accidentally change the .tga which caused that pixel shift? Because I don't see any difference (other then the color of course) between the skin you're using and other VII skins. No pixel shifts in any case...
Well anyways, I gotta go. So good luck experimenting, and if it doesn't work, you could always do some Photoshopping yourself. But be careful, you might get hooked ;)

[Madox58]

I'd guess the SNK mask is slightly out of place.

On the 7C
In S3D Node #256
The Z setting is 0.410058
Bump that up VERY little steps at a time.
Try .41058 to start and work from there.

On the 7B
In S3D Node #254
The Z setting is 0.415517
Bump that up VERY little steps at a time.
Try .416017 to start and work from there.

[frau kaleun]

No, because I extracted the files again from the zipped download and looked at those to make the comparison. So it wasn't some change I made to the deck .tga file after I unzipped it the first time and enabled it.

Anyway - I'll play around with it and see what happens.