Version 1.0

Welcome to my skinning tutorial! I am not an expert on writing tutorials nor making skins, so feel free to correct any mistakes I may have made by mailing me.

OK, let's get started... important stuff will be in bold!

First of all, you are going to need a few programs. These are:

  1. Mat Master
  2. MatEdit
  3. Container Manager (ConMan)
  4. Patch Commander
  5. A good drawing program (I recommend Adobe Photoshop)
To get the first 4, download this file and uncompress it using a utility like WinZip.

We will start by putting the words "Shoot me" on Kyle's back. The screenshots in this tutorial are of Adobe Photoshop. While feel free to email me regarding using different programs for skin editing, please note that I don't use any other progs and may only be able to help you to a small extent.

Go to your Jedi Knight/resource/misc directory and open up the file models.dat using a normal text editor like Notepad. From the models.dat file you can see that Kyle's model is called ky.3do - look on the screen shot to the below.


Now that you know the name of the model, close Notepad and open up ConMan. Open the file res2.gob in the resource directory of your JK CD. Click on 3do, then highliht the file ky.3do and go to File/Extract Files on the main menu and select a directory to save the file to. Check out the screenshot below. 



Open the extracted file in WordPad (it's too big to be viewed in Notepad). After the main header you should see a materials list. These will be the actual textures put onto the model. You should see something like this:

Since we are going to edit Kyle's back, memorise the filename kybodyb.mat and close WordPad. Go back to ConMan, and open up the mat subdirectory of the directory 3do. Look for kybodyb.mat, and highlight it. Extract it as before. Look at screenshot below: 



You can close ConMan for now. Open up MatMaster. Select Decompile MAT, select kybodyb.mat  in the Input file name field, and select a cmp file from the MatMaster directory. Click convert, and open up your drawing program. 

In your drawing program, open up the converted BMP file and write the words shoot me on it. When you are finished admiring your artwork, select the palette file as jk.pal (it is included in the ZIP file). THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT STEP!!! This is done so that when you use your skin in JK it doesn't turn out to be in hippy psychedelic colors like fluoro pink (ouch). In Photoshop, to change the palette you go to Image/Mode/Indexed color and select custom in the pop-up window, and click on Load and select the JK.pal file. Save your file. The end result should like something like this:

I would draw a better one, but time is of the essence... besides, this is easier to understand. OK, I know I'm not Vincent Van Goch or Pablo Picasso here, but this is more or less what you should have.

Go back to MatMaster and this time, select compile MTM to MAT. In the input file name field, select the MTM file of the MAT you extracted. Select an output file name, and press convert. You should have a screen looking like this.



After you have pressed convert, go to the directory where the new MAT is stored (the output file name - see screenshot above). Copy the MAT
to your Jedi Knight/Resource/3do/mat directory, and launch the game. Play as Kyle. The final result should look like this.

 
 Well, if you got the same result, you did the right thing and congrats! Note: the red colors on the back might be distorted when viewing them in different kinds of light. This is due to a palette problem. Avoid using red in your skins unless it is a small detail or you are sure of your abilities. If you did not get this result, well - if at first you don't succeed, try, try again!

That ends the basic tutorial. I will supplement this tutorial with the ability of creating your own skins, not editing as soon as I can - roughly 4 days from the time of publishing. I hope you enjoy making skins.

Korshun

ã Michael Penkov 1999