Reskin Blueprint

[DaveDewhurst]

Anyone played with these yet?

Had a little test last night and they seem quite useful in limited way.

Would reduce the amount of geos needed significantly, especially for wagons where only the body texture changes between each one.

Dave

[ChrisBarnes]

I've noticed them and had a peek out of curiosity, but didn't take it any further than that. Does it have any advantages over the normal method of creating reskins by various copying of files, renaming of folders and hacking .xmls?

Chris

[DaveDewhurst]

Lets say I wanted to reskin the HAA (the big red kuju one, HTA?)
You make a reskin blueprint.
Give it a disply name the same as you would when editing an exisiting .bin
say "HAA Dirty EWS"
Point it to the original .bin
then you choose a texture you want to change. so if the main body colour TgPcDx is called "main"
You sepcify "Main" as the texture name and then point it towards my new texture.

This reskin blueprint can live in the same directory as the original .bin and my modified texture can be in the same directory as the original texture.
So theres only one directory, only one Geo, all the wagon data like weight, brakes etc is called from the original file

In game it appears as your disply name in whatever category you specified and when clicked it loads up the original wagon but with your replacement texture.

Dave

[DaveDewhurst]

Heres an example,
Ive used Ben Yates excellent 21T hopper reskins just for an example, as they were the first I found.
They wont be used/released etc, it was purely for this screenshot example.

As with a lot reskins in the UKTS library. once you have downloaded the skin, usually into a seperate directory from the original, you then need to copy the .GeoPcDx into the reskin directory.
But with the reskin blueprint you dont.

Heres the 21T Hopper default directory with the reskin bluprint in it (Highlighted)


It is referencing the new texture which is inside the default Texture directory (Highlighted)


and in game it appears in the list when you pick the 8F from the provider list


Dave

[ChrisBarnes]

Sounds like the best way to simply add new skins, if that's all you want to do. If you go more in-depth and change more than just textures, then it seems like the normal method would be best. Many thanks for sharing, Dave.

Chris

[gptech]

If the .Geo for whatever item of stock you want to add a reskin for can be opened and edited by RW Tools it's relatively simple to change the referenced texture files, but this method certainly seems to remove the need for a 'custom' .Geo so it's very interesting. Just exactly where do you find this 'reskin blueprint'?

[deltic009]

Sounds like the best way to simply add new skins, if that's all you want to do. If you go more in-depth and change more than just textures, then it seems like the normal method would be best. Many thanks for sharing, Dave.

Chris

Seems like a good way of saving hard drive space, I must have over 80 .Geo files for the Class 47 alone. It also means limited bandwidth usage on downloads and more user friendly for those who don't know or feel comfy with the method to copy files etc.

[FoggyMorning]

Maybe a silly question, but why have reskinners not used this method widely? (The Reskin blueprint is not a "new" feature as far as I'm aware, and has been there for at least the last couple of incarnations of TS)

[DaveDewhurst]

If the .Geo for whatever item of stock you want to add a reskin for can be opened and edited by RW Tools it's relatively simple to change the referenced texture files, but this method certainly seems to remove the need for a 'custom' .Geo so it's very interesting. Just exactly where do you find this 'reskin blueprint'?

Its available in the Blueprint Editor along with all the other undocumented blueprints.

Maybe a silly question, but why have reskinners not used this method widely? (The Reskin blueprint is not a "new" feature as far as I'm aware, and has been there for at least the last couple of incarnations of TS)

Lack of ducumentation/awareness?
Although the reskin blueprint has one limitation that may limit it from being used with some of the more recent engines.
You can only swap one texture. You can specify as many as you want to BE swapped but only one seems to actually GET swapped.
Still a massive space saver for wagons and early kuju engines that only use one main texture.

Dave

[ChrisBarnes]

The reason I personally haven't used it before is because I only found out about it long after starting reskinning, and not knowing what work the blueprint could save you, I simply couldn't be bothered working out a new method. As I say, it looks like it is the method of choice for those who just want a new skin ingame, and as deltic009 says, will save hugely on a HDD space, not to mention keep asset folders like Kuju more compact. If you want to go further than just a new skin, ie. new script, engine.bin, simulation.bin, sounds etc etc, like TPR Leander, then from what has been described, you would have to do it the way it's always been done.

Chris

[jetstream]

Dave

This sounds like an excellent idea. However, I haven't quite followed your moves between the files, folders and bins.

Perhaps when you get a moment you could give us a step by step run through of an example.

Many thanks

[DaveDewhurst]

Dave
This sounds like an excellent idea. However, I haven't quite followed your moves between the files, folders and bins.
Perhaps when you get a moment you could give us a step by step run through of an example.
Many thanks

Here you go,
Ive made an example reskin blueprint which can be used and reused wherever needed.
http://rapidshare.com/files/87106100/EX ... EPRINT.bin

Download the above file and put into the directory where you want the reskin.
Its probably best to put it in the same directory as the models Geo and bin file

Then put your new texture in the texture directory of said wagon if it has one
(it doesnt have to be but keeping the same heirachy keeps it neat)

Open the blueprint and change to suit your needs
Ive put some comments in capital letters in the sections that need completing. You should be able, looking those, to figure out how to make it work.

Dave

[shanyiqua]

Can you show how a resking blueprint looks like? What means "Texture name" or "Texture ID"?

[shanyiqua]

Oh my god!

It's working!!! It's amazing! This makes repainting much easier, also makes the structure of the game files less messy, and last but not least makes repaints much more efficient, as only one model and the main blueprint is loaded just once.

[rfletcher72]

Dave

This sounds like an excellent idea. However, I haven't quite followed your moves between the files, folders and bins.

Perhaps when you get a moment you could give us a step by step run through of an example.

Many thanks

+1