Skinning and Texture?

[Ravage777]

I am really confused about what a skin is and whats the difference between that and a texture.
I get these scenario folders in the badge and banner downkloads sometimes and i dont have a clue what they are for.
Is a skin just a color change for an army or isthat the texture?
What do they call it when you want to change the army color/banner/badge but care less about the voiceover or cutscene or actuall names listed besides on the banner or badge.
Dont care about all the icon pictures either.
What is exactly the term skin referring to in its totality.
What exactly is a texture?
In my gaming mag. texture is like the bump mapping scrapes and scratches but for this games it seems its the term for the colors.
At other times it seems skin is the reference for colors.
I just want to change the army colors for stuff like in the regular painter and the banner and the badge.
Dont mind it still listing blood ravens or the build icons still being red or the voices and cutscenes staying the same.
Im confused about calling this skinning or texturing though and people keep saying downloadable skin packs.
What are these,like army sets for skirmish mode or are they something you can add to single player campaigns to change it to a different style as i mentioned i want to do above?

Thankyou
Ravage777

[stfas]

they aren't really different, both are textures, well skins include multiple textures to make a skin ( (skin name)_default and (skin name)_default_dirt with some additions for team colourability ( (skin name)_default_eyes/trim/primary/secondary/weapons and note that these are just needed if you make the skin teamcolourable, so if it isn't teamcolourable don't include these, will just be a waste of space) which is then all of the textures made into a .wtp file.

[Ravage777]

So if i was just changing color of army,regular like in the painter and changing banner and badge then that is skinning or texturing?

ThankYou
Ravage777

[stfas]

not really, skinning is only to do with the .wtp files (possibly include the .rtx (campaign colour) files and the .rsh files) being in the painter doesn't mean you're skinning.

[IBBoard]

Stfas is basically right, there's no real difference between a texture and a skin and they are often used interchangeably. If you do want to make a distinction then a texture being a file and a skin being a full set of textures for a single model is about the best one, even if it is arbitrary and may not apply the same to other people.

As for skinning versus army painter work, I'd agree with stfas that "skinning" is anything to do with editing the WTP/RTX/RSH files while what goes on in the army painter is just colour scheme selection.

You'll also notice similar distinctions being made on the main Skins@HWT site: Patterns and Skins are textures, Team Colours are the .teamcolour files (simple text files) that the game creates with your selection of colours, badge and banner, and then Army Schemes is the name I've given to the full package of .teamcolour, badge and banner (so everything that someone needs to recreate the same scheme you made). Dawn of War as a game doesn't really a concept of a packaged "army scheme", but it's an ease of use thing for download.

If you want to change the single player campaign textures then you can base it on a .teamcolour file (i.e. what you've picked in the army painter) but it needs to be converted in to RTX textures so that the game can use them. The general process isn't too complex, but does involve a lot of work due to the number of files that exist.

[stfas]

and here i thought i was a bad explainer, well seem i was wrong (well sometimes i can be a bad explainer)

[Ravage777]

You didnt explain it bad im just a bad understander.
But that is the distinction i needed,textures and skins are the same thing just different references for different people.
A skin is really a combination of textures.
When you say alot of work are you talking moving files for 5-10 hrs or moving files for 4-6 days?
Hours i can do,days will mean breaks respectively.It took me about 15 hrs to get all the badge and banner sets i could find everywhere on the net.
Then categorize them and place them all in 2 folders called banners and badges respectively.
I just dont have alot of technical knowledge like people nowadays but im not dumb either.
You gave the explanation you would understand.
I need the caveman explanation.
When i grew up they didnt have computers or video games or cellphones or alot of the stuff they have nowadays.So common knowlegde on this technical stuff isnt so common to me.I still got a rock for a front door.

ThankYou
Ravage777

[stfas]

actually it woulden't take hours or days, as the files are already in your dxp2data-sharedtexturefull and you just need to extract it with something like the dawn of war mod tools by relic, then you need to do what i said

[Ravage777]

Howabout i pay you to do it for me and we call it a day?

Ravage777

[stfas]

im not going to do it for money, its easy really. (i think you're kind of weird to try to pay me..... i mean why would a fourteen year old person want with money?)

[IBBoard]

Surely there's all the normal reasons - alcohol, mobile phones, bling, trendy clothes, money, being cool...

As for how long it would take, I'd say it could be done in an hour. Extracting WTPs from the game takes a few minutes, as does making them in to TGAs as it should be possible to do them in one go. Renaming the files can be quick if you have the right program to help, and then converting them to DDS should be another batch job through the texture tool, as should creating the RTX files. The hardest part is potentially just making sure you're creating the RTX set!

[Ravage777]

So its an hour per army,or per game?
Because if its an hour per game i will definately pay 80$ instead of 40$
Does this sound like something anybody is interseted in?
Im a 36 yr. old and my time is worth more to me than my money.
Generally thats why people use money is to accomplish something that will take them to long to do themselves.
I pay for shoes because it would take me way to long to make some shoes myself.

Thankyou
Ravage777

[IBBoard]

You might be able to do it in an hour per game, but I've never tried. Given that most of it should be batch processing (i.e. click "make RTX" once and select all of the files to do in one go) then it could be quicker, but since I've never done it before then I can't be sure of the length of time.

Again, we're getting a bit off track here. Lets try and keep this topic to the differences between skins and textures

[Ravage777]

Sorry about getting off topic,
Skins are batches of colors sometimes combined with different textures.
Textures are like the amount of scratches on the armor and scars on the heroes face ect...
Correct?

Thanjyou
Ravage777

[IBBoard]

Not quite, or at least not to me.

Textures are individual files. Some units will have one texture, others (like the Force Commander) may have three or four texture files to allow Relic to put all of the detail in.

Skins are the set of texture files for a single unit (or set of units). In the case of the Tactical Marines then a texture is a skin because all of their texturing is in a single file, but vehicles and characters often have multiple textures in a skin.

As I said earlier, some people might not use that distinction and may use the words interchangeably, but that's where I would mark the difference.