Created by antomic. Ok, so you want to make skins for warthogs, banshees, weapons, and much more, right? It can be quite confusing, but with this guide, you can save yourself alot of time. This should be quite helpful. [bold]---Before you even begin, check that you have these things-----[/bold] ***modded xbox*** (hard or soft) Learn how to mod it here **An FTP connection from your xbox to your computer**. learn to do it here *Programs to use* dothalo Adobe Photoshop .DDS Plugin http://files.halomods.com/download.php?id=51494&sid=91166582d675e7a4b53e883e08ad2f7a Halo2 bitmap internalizer ________________________________________________ If you have all this, you're ready to start! Table of contents (the five steps) 1.Installing photoshop and plugin 2.Opening and extracting a bitmap 3.Editing in Photoshop 4.Injecting a bitmap 5.internalizing a bitmap ____________________________________________________ 1. INSTALLING PHOTOSHOP AND PHOTOSHOP PLUGIN (Quite easy) First thing you want to do is open and install phtoshop CS2, or if you already have photoshop, just put the .DDS plugin into your plugins folder. Photoshop CS2 is only a 30 day trial. To get the full version, you'll need to download a cd crack or buy it. I highly reccommend you buy it, because it is a great program and the creators deserve every cent. You will need to set up an Adobe account to download, though Once you have adobe photoshop installed, you'll want to put the .DDs plugin that you just downloaded into the correct folder. It should go like this: Ok! you're work area for the bitmap is ready. ___________________________________________________ 2. OPENING AND EXTRACTING A BITMAP Once you have photoshop installed, You want to extract the bitmap that you want to use to make a skin. Open up dothalo You must have the halo map on your hard drive. FTP it! Once you have chosen a map that you want to put a skinned vehicle/whatever, it's time to open the map! I'm using Headlong as an example. This is the part that may get confusing. Once you open a map, on the window that says "tags" click on a [bitm] Bitmap. I will be skinning a warthog as an example.It looks like this. That is where all the images are stored for weapons, players, vehicles and backrounds. You'll want to scroll down until you find a bitmap called "objects\vehicles\warthog\bitmaps\warthog_standard. It is highlighted in the image below. Bingo! that's the image we want to extract, so on your raw data editor window, click "extract bitmap". Save in a place that you'll easily find. Now that all that is done, let's move on to our next step. ____________________________________________ 3. EDITING IN PHOTOSHOP Since I use photoshop 7, it may be a bit different to CS2, but it should be extremely similar and easy to use. First thing you want to do is open up the bitmap we just saved. From here on, you can to whatever your heart desires with all the amazing tools photoshop provides. Make the warthog any way you want! This is a very important step. When you finish, press 'SAVE AS' and save it as a .DDS It will ask you how it should be saved. Be very careful because the file has to be saved in a specific way. It should be DXT2 or 3. Good! that's all done and out of the way! Just a few more steps to go! ________________________________________________________ 4. INJECTING A BITMAP Open dot halo again. Go to the tag that we used to extract the bitmap. Next to the Extract Bitmap" button, there is an inject bitmap" button. Inject the bitmap we made in photoshop. Save and fix the encryption on your modified map. WHEW! That was easy! ________________________________________________________ 5. INTERNALIZING A BITMAP Once you have injected your bitmap into your modded map and fixed the encryption,Open Halo2IB The reason we need to use this tool is because we need to put the bitmap we just made into the place that the skins load. It will make the mod visible to you. Once you open Halo2IB, Follow the instructions provided. When you press, intenalize bitmap, It will ask you to open shared.map. This is the map where all your skins and bitmaps are stored. Don't be confused. The map really is called "Shared.map" Once you open it, your computer will work for about 5 to ten minutes, depending on its speed. When you finish, give yourself a pat on the back. YOU DID IT! FINALLY, FTP Your shared.map and the map we put the skin on into your xbox's harddrive or burn it to a dvd-R to burn it, look here Your final peice of art should look something like this when you play: MAY YOU LIVE LONG AND PROSPER! ANTOMIC
great tut dude i kood tell u put a lot of time into this and thanx a lot cuz i was wondering y whenever i skinned, in the map it was invisible cuz i never knew wat internalizing was lol thanx
ya, you have to internalize it so that it will show. And yes, I did put quite alot of time in this guide. Thankyou for noticing
Instead of DXT 5, wouldn't you save it as the DXT that dothalo told you in the raw data editor. for this case it would be DXT 3. Like in this edited version of your pic
oh, my bad. I thought it said DXT5 The scenery and stuff have different formats, so i must have mixed them up.....I was up pretty late making this.
wow antomic u must have worked hard at this...BUMP^^^ looks like hours of work so im bumping it up so people can use it..
very nice tut i already know how to skin but i tought myself and it took me awhile to get it all figured out this is the way i do it and it works great i wish i would have had something like this when i was learning
I had to teah myself too. It was actualy quite fun learning about the maps and how the bitmaps worked. Also, im gonna fix the problem in my guide.
