Advanced Skinning - Fire Paint Job

[Gohraw]

In this tutorial I'm going to teach you how to skin your vehicle to look like it has flames painted on it. Before starting this tutorial I suggest you take a look at the basic skinning tutorial by Jay here

Basic Skinning Tutorial

Just like in the basic skinning tut, you will need the following

-Adobe Photoshop CS2 Demo <-URL taken from Clay’s basic skinning tutorial
-Or the PS CS3 Demo
^Please note that you will need to register to adobe.com to download this trial
-Halo PC modding kit
^You only really need HMT v3.5, but other useful tools are in this
-DDS Plugin <-URL taken from Clay’s basic skinning tutorial

Alrighty, let’s get started!!



I'm going to use the rocket warthog on blood gulch as an example, so bring up HMT and open bloodgulch.map

Open the [bitm] section and scroll down to vehicles\rwarthog\bitmaps\rwarthog. It should look like this



Now click the ‘Save Texture’ button and save your bitmap to a place you can easily find. I prefer making a Skins folder and then saving the bitmap as ‘rwarthog-orig-dxt1’. the ‘orig’ stands for original; this way I know it is my original texture that I can use again later if I ever inject a really bad looking bitmap. If you look just above the ‘Save Texture’ button in HMT you’ll see that it says DXT1, which explains the ‘-dxt1’ part.



You don’t HAVE to save it like I do. You can keep it as ‘rwarthog’ for all I care, but I like doing it my way =P

Close your map, minimize HMT, and open up photoshop. Once photoshop is up, open the .dds file you just saved. When it asks about the MIP maps, hit NO.



Since your file is open now, go to the bottom right corner and click the “make new layer” button twice.



Rename your two new layers to “black” and “flames” by double clicking the layer names. It should look like this



Click the black layer to select it and make sure your foreground color is set to black and background color set to white. Do this by hitting D on your keyboard.

With your black layer selected, push ALT+Backspace to fill the layer with black. After that you need to duplicate it (CTRL+J). Duplicate it a second time. Now click on the eyeball next to your 3 black layers. This is what it should look like:



Now click on your flames layer and look at your tools on the left. Click and hold the Lasso Tool until a side menu pops up. Choose the Polygonal Lasso Tool.



In case you are unfamiliar with this tool, this is how you use it and what it does:

Click anywhere you feel like on the warthog picture and then move you mouse off to the side. You’ll see that there’s a line connected to where you just clicked and where your mouse is now. Click on another random spot and you’ll see that there is one line connecting the first two spots you chose, and another line connected to where your cursor is now.

If you go back and click your first spot, everything inside or between your lines will become a selection and everything you try to do to your photo will only work within that selection. To get rid of the selection press CTRL+D

Once your selection is gone, use the polygonal lasso tool to make a selection around your warthog that looks like the picture below: (don’t forget, your flames layer must be selected!)



Go up and click select > modify > border. Make the width 2 pixels and hit ok. After that push CTRL+Backspace to fill your selection with white and push CTRL+D to get rid of your selection. You should have something like this:




Push E to select your eraser tool and erase the upper part of your white line so it looks like this (you can adjust the eraser size at the top left):



Go back to your lasso tool by pushing L and make a selection around the triangular part of the warthog like this:



Make a border like before. Select > modify > border. 2 pixel width, OK. CTRL+Backspace to fill with white, and deselect (CTRL+D).

Go back to your eraser and erase the left and bottom sides of the triangle to make it look like this:



Now hit the letter M on your keyboard and you’ll get a set of crosshairs. Click and drag the crosshair to make a box around what’s let of your triangle. Then, while holding the SHIFT button on your keyboard, make another box around the front 1/3 of your warthog so you end up with something like this:



What you want to do now is copy (CTR+C) what’s inside your selection, and then hit Backspace to delete what’s there. Once the lines inside your boxes are gone, deselect your selection (CTRL+D).

Make a new layer like you did before (only one). Select the new layer and name it flames2. Paste your lines onto this new layer (CTRL+V). If you accidentally hit CTRL+C again you’re pretty much screwed and have to remake your white lines.

When you paste your lines you’ll notice that they go to the center of your screen. Select your move tool by hitting V and move your lines to the place they used to be. You can use the arrows on your keyboard to nudge them a bit if you need to.

Once your lines are back in place, go up to filter > stylize > wind. Set the method to wind and direction from the right, then hit OK.

Make your premature flames longer by hitting CTRL+F once and ONLY once. If you make these lines too long they’ll look like junk.

Now you need to go to filter > blur > Gaussian blur. Set the radius to 0.5 pixels. You should have something similar to this by now:



Okay, almost to make your first set of flames! Click and drag the layer named ‘black copy 2’ so that it’s directly underneath ‘flames2’. click the blank box next to black copy 2 and the eye will reappear.

CTRL click the flames2 layer so that you have the ‘black copy 2 layer’ and ‘flames2’ layers both selected. Right-click one of them and click ‘merge layers’. (By the way, there's supposed to be an eye next to black copy 2. I created this pic before I realized I made the mistake)



Let’s give these sad excuses for flames some color =] press CTRL+U to bring up Hue/Saturation and apply these settings.



Duplicate your ‘flames2’ layer with CTRL+J and bring up the Hue/Saturation again. Apply these settings.



Change ‘flames2 copy’s blend mode from normal to Color Dodge.



So now your first set of flames should look like this



Before we move on, you need to combine ‘flames2’ and ‘flames2 copy’. do that by selecting both layers, then right-clicking one of the layers and choose ‘merge layers’.

Obviously flames aren’t straight blurry lines, so we’re going to make them curvy. To do that go up to filter > liquify. Choose the warp tool (W) and change the settings on the right to those in the picture below.



The warp tool will stretch and smudge whatever you drag it over, so use it to make your flames wavy and longer. Click OK when finished.



Once you’re done with that, click the eye on ‘flames2 copy’ to turn it off, allowing you to see what’s underneath it.

Turn on the ‘black copy’ layer (click the empty box to make the eye appear). Select the ‘flames’ layer and ’black copy’ layer and merge them

Go up to image > rotate canvas > 90 degrees CCW.

Do the same thing to this set of flames as you did before but with a few differences.
ONE: Don’t push CTRL+F to make the flames longer or they’ll be too long
TWO: When applying the Gaussian blur, set the radius to .75
THREE: The liquefying method is different. See picture below.



Once you’re done liquefying, hit OK and go to image > rotate canvas > 90 degrees CW to get it back to normal.

Make sure both of your flame layers are turned on and set their blending modes to ‘screen’



Vuala! You have flames! But wait, we’re still not done! Yeah, sucks doesn’t it? Don’t worry, all you have left is the hood and you’re DONE! Hooray!!

First thing’s first, you need to click on your ‘black’ layer and then create a new layer. Title it ‘hood’. With your ‘hood’ layer still selected, use your lasso tool (L) to create a selection around the hood so it looks like this



Create a white border like before, and use your eraser to erase it so that it looks like this



Turn on your ‘black’ layer and merge it with your hood layer. Rotate the canvas 90 degrees CW (NOT CCW) and create flames like you did the first time. Be sure you remember to rotate your canvas 90 degrees CCW to get your texture upright again.

Hooray! You’re done making your flames! Now you can go back to your background layer and make any other changes you feel like making.

Once you’re done, right click one of the layers and click ‘flatten image‘. Save your new .dds file as rwarthog-new-dxt1 (or just save as rwarthog2, doesn‘t matter). Make sure you click DXT1 (No Alpha) when it asks you about the NVIDIA dds format. Alao, you hit OK when it has that message talking about the alpha being lost.

Alright! Now you can go back to your bloodgulch map in HMT, navigate back to the rwarthog bitmap, and inject your new texture. Enjoy!

Here’s mine-







NOTE: You can mix up the colors in the Hue/Saturation if you want to make something weirdo looking. Also, this tutorial looks even more awesome when you add fire to your tires =]

Flaming Warthog Tires

If you enjoyed this tut, then please leave a thanks!

[TerminatioN]

Impressive tutorial. Kind of long, but impressive none the less.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks,
-TerminatioN

[Gohraw]

Thank you very much!
I would continue to make more skinning tutorials, but I'm not exactly sure where I would go next...

[Gohraw]

Woops... double post. My bad.

[CrippLed]

Pretty sick might have to give this a try.