Suggestions for new skins (16 skins to do)

[IBBoard]

It's okay, I wouldn't want to stop your rampage of new skins Permission granted. We all live and learn.

What kind of tattoos have you gone for? My TT Orks have Grim glyphs on their shoulders and some have bands around their arms. Have you given them a bit of an edge so that they stand out against the skin as well? (I'd recommend making the _dirt layer fractionally bigger for that - the Chaos Cultist I did has 50% of the normal brightness on the outside pixel of his tattoo)

Thanks for picking up on some of these requests. I've always meant to get round to them but there always seems to be something else to do.

[Seaglen]

thanks a lot IBB. will upload the ork skins i have into an ork pack.
im just getting started on this whole skinning buisness, but im really enjoying making 40k units better!

[Seaglen]

i may give the horrors a go, as they would look cool with tzeentch sybols on. would be sweet to nake the symbols glowing or at least with a glow effect.....

[stfas]

well you could always do a .rsh for a little reflecting/small-glow on it (etc: illumination, spec (spec requires a reflection map)

[Seaglen]

yeah that would be a cool idea. never tried specularity before, but it would look sweet on the horrors.
is there any way of making the actual specular reflection coloured, instead of just white reflection?

[IBBoard]

Nothing I know of. I think part of the point is that it's a white reflection because it's shining off metal. Specularity is similarly just a small white glow because it's simple and because anything more can be done on the model through FX.

Having said that then each layer should just be a DDS image, so it might be possible to put a coloured on in there and have it work properly. I'm not quite sure how well it'd work, though.

[Seaglen]

ah ok, i just thought it would look sweet to have a tzeentch symbol which could change hue from different angles. say the innitial colour was teamcolourable, and a colour specularity ontop would look sweet. (think the hat from back to the future 2!)

[IBBoard]

*thinks* I'll try and get this clear now I'm not at work.

Self-illumination is a glow layer that's white. The image should be black and white (not sure what the engine does if it isn't, but that's all we've ever seen them as) and it adds a glow and cancels out coloured glow (e.g. around the original Chaos Lord's head).

Specularity and reflection are a pair of layers that works together. IIRC reflection is the image that is seen and may (but I'm not sure) support colours. Specularity should then be the black and white mask image that determines where the reflection is visible. You can check the Monolith out for reference - that's where Compiler and someone else first saw it and pointed me to for reference to add it to the Texture Tool.

TBH I've never played with spec/reflection as there's a post from the Relic Devs that said it was one of the worst culprits for slowing rigs down (and not even absolute bottom of the line, can barely run it rigs) as it can take quite a bit of processing to do.

[Seaglen]

hmm ok. well i have my computer sorted again, so i have some more things to upload. i have an updated version of my exorcist skin, and sisters with hair colouring.

will definately give the horros a go, and will attempt to make them look more tzeentch-y

any ideas on how to make them look better?

[Jaylo101]

Here's a quick suggestion, how about camo for the Tau buildings, just like their unit textures.

[IBBoard]

Seaglen: Detail is normally a good move. Other than that then the Horrors quite closely match GW's figures so I don't know if there's much else you need to do.

Jaylo: I'll add it to the list. Hangar-8 would be the ideal person to do it, as he did the originals, but he's a little short on time at the moment and is working on the Sisters of Battle.

[IBBoard]

I'm currently whipping up a quick set of 'no camo' khaki Guardsmen. Rather than being in their camo fatigues they're in their plain 'khaki' fatigues (although 'khaki' is still team colourable).

The Guardsmen are already available with Primary armour and Secondary clothing, and the Sentinel, Leman Russ and Basilisk are complete but not uploaded in pure Primary.

[DanTay25]

I'd quite like to see entirely metallic Marines... not with specularity or anything (my computer would likely crash), just with a shiny-looking skin, made in the same way as the chest eagle and shoulder trim.

Speaking of the chest eagle, I also think that would look good in gold and silver - mostly silver, but the central skull and the top rim of the wings would be gold. Here's a 30-second diagram:
It looks good on my TT Marines...

And another thing. Instead of assigning the eyes to Trim2 (beacuse everyone likes TC-able eyes...), would it be possibe to make it primary and cause it to colour-bleed, giving you a changable eye colour that always contrasts with the surrounding armour?

I tried a practice skin - removing the cloth roll from the Scouts (I know it's been done, but I just wanted to have a go) and ended up with some semitransparent rainbow Scouts... Hmm.

[IBBoard]

Metallic Marines: I'm not sure what you could do without using reflections or specularity on the RSH. Anything in the WTP might look okay from one angle but would probably look really odd from another angle. Someone with the right talents might be able to manage a "non-metallic metal" look, though. Something a bit like GW artists have started doing on their models recently.

Gold and silver eagles: You might be able to get something like that by desaturating the wings of a golden eagle and possibly lightening them up a touch as well. The golden wings would already have the metallic effect, so desaturating them should make them the grey necessary to look more like silver (possibly re-tinted slightly blue or something, since silver isn't always pure grey?)

Colour-bleed eyes: The problem there is the combination of colours. The reason you can't always spot the pixel clashes with all colour combos is because some colours combine to make something quite reasonable while others tip over the edge and start to clash. It may be possible, but it would need a lot of experimenting with a lot of different colours.

What were you think of doing with Trim 2 once it was freed up?

[DanTay25]

Metallic Marines: This is what gave me the idea - the gauntet on H-8's Commander.

It's that faint metallic sheen that I'm talking about.

Gold and silver eagles: Well, I guess I could attempt it. Although my previous skinning attempt somehow resulted in me having to reinstall DC. Twice. Also, if I do, may I use your CleanMarines skin? Actually, spectre716's version would be better, as the eagle is already perma-gold on his... but how would I contact him to ask permission?

Colour-bleed eyes: How exactly does pixel clash occur? It is a cause of two colour layers overlapping (say, Primary and Secondary)? As for using Trim2... could be used for anything, really. Maybe the backpack, or the bottom half of the bolter. Or the tactical/assault symbol. But that's a little boring...