TimSYoung40145 wrote:What's the easiest way to reskin a loco into e.g. Civil Engineers Dutch using Photoshop?
Thats the $64,000 question!
In an ideal world, you would start with a nice plain grey texture, but including the useful bits of shading detail. Sadly, there aren't many locos that come with a painting kit, so you have to improvise. One place to start might be the lovely fastline tankers, as there is a painting kit on their site you can download. Probably not a bad model to learn to reskin with as its quite simple.
Its a big learning curve. Start simple, and be prepared to research and experiment.
A couple of ways of doing this:
If you have a look at the alpha channel, the model maker may have been kind enough to provide an alpha channel that you could use as a base texture. I understand the 156 has such a texture. To use it as a base, in the channels selection deselect RGB and select alpha so just the alpha channel is visible. CTRL+A, copy, reselect the RGB, deselect Alpha, back into the layers tab and then paste and you should have a layer to start painting on.
If not, you need to improvise. Find a texture that is close to what you want - say a rail blue 37. If you copy the background as a new layer (and layers are everything in reskinning) and then desaturate, you should have a grey base to work with. If you are working on the nose, you will want to keep the yellow - either select the bits you want and put them in another layer above the desaturated layer, or cut the same bits out of the desaturated layer so they show. Picking the right model in the first place is important, as is working out the mapping i.e. which bit goes where on the model.
Painting itself:
The first rule is don't just slap a load of paint on it. it will look horrendous in game. Good reskinning involves painting on new layers and using the right blend mode to keep the detail that is already there but getting the right colour in game. Some of my skins use 3 layers in different blend modes to get the right shade. You can also use actual textures (i.e. pictures of metal) overlaid with colour to create extra detail. This takes time and patience.
Weathering:
My pet hate is bright over saturated ex-works stock - it just doesn't look right to me. use adjustment layers, especially hue/saturation and brightness/contrast to get the right effect and compare it in-game against other stock. Try it in different lights. Alter the darkness of the alpha channel to adjust the reflection... this is all stuff that is trial and error.
Get some grunge brushes (lots of free ones available) and use them to add weathering. Do everything in new layers so you can fade them in and out.
Some useful tips on weathering here:
http://www.3dtrains.com/guides/
Useful tutorials:
http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/forums/forum34-general/
Some very useful general tutorials here
http://www.cgtextures.com/ particularly on layers.
Multiple textures:
Most locos use more than 1 texture. This means that if you don’t do exactly the same steps in terms of layers they won’t look right on the loco. This includes lining being in exactly the right place. This has driven many reskinners to tears, including me.
Getting textures in and out of the game:
Once you have got your texture as a DDS file in photoshop, save it as a copy as a PSD file. Do all your work on the PSD file, and when you’re happy with it select all the layers, hold down shift and drag it onto your DDS file. All the layers will be aligned. Flatten the image and save the DDS file in the normal way. That way you can amend it as much as you like without having to repeat any texturing work.
Hope that helps
B