Love to see/want to learn...

[Argentwyrm]

One of the things I'm dying to see is water... water you can put into sunken floor space or "closed" arrangements within SG bases in CoH, or VG bases in CoV. Is there /any/ way that such a thing can be made/done?

I keep trying to make RP environments out of SG bases, with trees, even a river... but it just doesn't look as good as I know it could with water.


The other thing: I would love to learn how to mod/make skins. I have a lot of ideas, and my curiosity would take care of the time--I'm sure I would spend a lot of time on it for weeks, heh. So anyone got a simple couple programs and a basic how-to they might be willing to share?

Thanks, all--I'll watch this space.

[Akurei]

PiGGViewer
+
Nvidia DDS Plugin for Photoshop

Extract from Pigg as DDS
Play with Art file
Recompress into a Texture

Override the folder it came from in the Pigg

There are a couple tutorials out there. I have one burried somewhere in one of my sql databases(of which I forgot the password to lol). Try a google on it. I'll answer any questions I can.

[Argentwyrm]

Thanks, Akurei!
I assume then that I will need photoshop? I don't yet have that one. But if I'm going to be working graphics, no doubt I should.

Thank you very much - and I will ask questions, but I'll try to ask them after I've done my best to figure them out first.

[Akurei]

Sounds good, I'm all for helping, but oh how I loathe to hold hands.

Yes you will need Photoshop. In theory the plugin also works with Paintshop Pro, though I could never get it working as well.

If you're looking to get serious into art, I'd really suggest Photoshop CE, or later. There is a tool found in CE that isn't in the previous versions. (I'm currently using 7.0, and really miss my CE client). It was basically a "smart shader" brush. Where you pick a base color to change to, then it intelligently overlays it using the existing color gradients of what you're painting over. You can do the same thing via selecting an area, and just changing hue/saturation values. This brush however allowed for much softer blends, and streaks.

If you wanna see the difference in shading, compair my blood work on the following:
Photoshop CE brush


Photoshop 7 Hue/Shading



Also I think someone modded it somewhere else to work with the older Macromedia Fireworks MX edt. Though I could be off my rocker on that last one.