Operation Pettticoat Skinning Tutorial

[CaptainCox]

Operation Petticoat
Skinning Tutorial
by
Captain Cox
Painting the USS Sea Tiger...PINK!

Tools I use:

Photoshop CS3 (Beta) any PS version or "Painter" for example will do.

DDS Utilities
Download Link:http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dds_utilities.html

Do some basic research, websites, books or what have you. I will use this picture as an image for this skin.



Now you should of course know where the skins are in "Silent Hunter 4" before we start.
Submarine Hulls C:/Ubisoft/SH4/Data/Submarine/(Each Class has its own folder) NSS_Tambor, Nss_Porpoise etc. If you open one of those you will see this



Those are the files we can work with
Submarine Conning Towers and other Textures C:/Ubisoft/SH4/Data/Textures/TNormal (also TLowRes but we leave that for now)/tex/(look for "NSS" files) NSS_GatoTower_T02




OK now we are all set to go.
I will use a Gato skin as the Sea Tiger was a Gato, so I open Photoshop
and go to "File" go to "Open As" and set the file option to "D3D DDS" look for the file in "C:/Ubisoft/SH4/Data/Submarine/NSS_Gato/NSS_Gato_T02.dds




This is what the Original Texture looks like.
Now I will just mask the areas i will change (for this exercise) using the "Polygonal Lasso Tool"
you can also use "Paths" but this time I use the "Lasso"




As you can see only the "light Blue/Gray" areas are selected now.
I will also do this with the lower "light Blue/Gray" part.

Now we can work only in these areas without touching anything else.
OK, now for the color. In this case its pretty easy as the "Sea Tiger" was pink, I will use the "Hue/Saturation Tool" Image/Adjustments/Hue/Saturation. Tic "Colorize"




I adjust the slide bars until I found what I am looking for in terms of color.
As you can see the "Black" holes are now colored to. No problem, i will use the "Magic Wand Tool" to select only those areas.




(This SHOULD! be done using layers, i did it the dirty way for demo purposes)
And use a brush and some Black Paint to fix it




Now we do the same with the "Conning Tower"




We are ready to pack this in to "JSGME" format, but first we have to save.
File/Save As/D3D DDS/( In the formats window) DXT5 ARGB (Interpolated Alpha)
save to your desktop for now (or any place BUT NOT THE GAME FOLDERS!!!)

OK now you have 2 DDS files on your desktop...right?

Make a new folder on the desktop and call it whatever (in my case "Sea Tiger")
In that folder create another folder called "Data" in that one create TWO folders, one called "Submarine" and one called "Textures"

In the Submarine folder make another folder called (in my case "NSS_Gato") and drop your "Hull Skin in that in my case "NSS_Gato_T02"
In the "Textures" folder create another folder named "TNormal" and in that a folder called "tex" and drop your "Conning Tower" in that (in my case "NSS_GatoTower_T02")

Now drag your Mod in my case "Sea Tiger" to your MODS folder in the main SH4 directory (you must of course have installed JSGME prior to this!) activate the mod with JSGME and lets have a look in game what it look s like.




Needs some more work...like always but you get the picture.
Have fun skinning your subs now!


EDIT in case you wonder why it says "NSS_Pclass Tower" on the tower pic, its my mistake and was corrected before taking the screen shot :p