Hi all, I'm in the process of creating a skin pack, but I've ran into a snag. Basically; my skins looked discoloured in game compared to the photoshop file. Sort of like it's washed out and faded. This is the case for the 5 cars I've made a skin for so far (Moonhawk, LeGran, Burnside, Bluebuck and Wendover). Find attached an image of the texture from Photoshop, and a screenshot of it in game. I've tried saving it both as a BC1 .dds, and as a BC7 .dds, however that didn't make a difference. It is not a .png. Anyone have any ideas on what and why this is happening? Thank you in advance!
I'm not in my pc to check your materials file, but it could be that you are not using the newer v1.5 materials. You can make sure by opening the world editor and selecting your material. If it says "convert to 1.5" then that's the problem. If not, something might be wrong in the exporting. What I do is: in Photoshop I export it as a .png file (using Ctrl + Alt + Shift + W). Then I open it in paint.net and export it as .dds using BC7 and "fast". Everything looks good.
Well, I wasn't able to get your skin to look not washed out properly, but I do have a kinda hacky way to get it to work if you just want it to work. Go to Photopea.com, import your image, then at the top of your screen go to Image > Adjustments > Levels and change the middle value that is a "1" to 0.44. Apply that and then export it. What it should look like afterwards: In-game:
well, I'm testing it and it doesn't look as bad as yours in my game, you could share the image file in a zip so the forum doesn't compress the image, because it also looks pixelated on my end. Also the image i'm downloading is 1127 x 573 which is not power of two, it should be at very least 1024 x 512. Something I noticed in your materials file is that the name in your image is not ending with ".color.dds". That tells the game to display that texture as RGB. After doing those changes (changed image resolution to 1024 x 512 and renamed it to "moonhawkmfpa.color.dds" this is the result attached is the zip file so you can test it, just drop it in your mods folder and select the skin named "test"
Huh, weird. I tried to add color.dds to the end and it said import failed, though it was doing that with some other stuff I was working on as well. I should probably go verify my game's integrity lol
That's because your image resolution is wrong. It should be a power of two. If it's not 1024 x 512, 2048 x 1024 or 4096 x 2048 it won't work. --- Post updated --- by the way, I don't know if you saw it, but I added the zip file to the post so you can check it.
Thank you everyone for your help! The resolution was off since the image I sent of my texture was just meant to show how it was discolored between the programs, the actual texture is the correct resolution. Changing the name to .color.dds has helped it quite a bit, still not perfect, but I'm not happy with it! How would I go about doing this? I haven't used the world editor before, so I'm not quite sure how I'd access the material for the skin...
Press F11 to open up the world editor and select the "Material Editior tab. If you don't see anything with that name, at the top left of the world editor screen select Window > Material Editor and it should open up. Next click on the vehicle while the skin is applied. You can tell if you have the car selected or not by looking at the little car icon that should be in the same place as the car itself. If it's orange it is selected, if it's white it is not. Once you have selected the car, go to the Materials drop down in the Material Editor window and select the option that says moonhawk.skin.[internalname] as seen here: You can tell if the skin is using the 1.5 materials by looking at the "Version" section under the "Material Info" drop down. If it says 1.5, then that isn't the issue. If it says 1, hit the big green button that says "Switch to V1.5 (PBR)". You can look at the textures and stuff for the skin itself by scrolling down in the Material Editor and looking for a drop down that is labelled "Layer 2", that is your skin material.
by the way, I don't know if you saw it, but I added the zip file to the post so you can check it. Don't worry, you are working with materials v1.5 Another stuff that do alter how an image look in game is "clearCoatRoughnessFactor" and "metallicFactor". Those control how metallic the material is and how rough the clear coat is. The closer the Metallic factor is to 1 the darker the texture will be. Using the Material Editor in the World Editor you can test this settings so you can find what values work best for your skin. With you paint design selected Open the World Editor [F1], then open the Material Editor [Widow - Material Editor] Now select the car by clicking in the car icon In your material editor look for your skin material select it and then open the layer 2 here you will find your texture, next to it you'll find the "Metallic Map" tab, in there is the value you entered in your material files ("metallicFactor": 0.5,). Change the value to 1 and then check the car, does it look better? play with it and find what you like, now scroll down and open advanced properties There you'll find the "Clear Coat Map" tab and the same value you entered in your Materials File ("clearCoatRoughnessFactor":0.07,) Change the roughness factor value to 1, do you like it? Play with this value and find what you like. Once you finished, go to your Materials file and change the values in "clearCoatRoughnessFactor": and "metallicFactor": to whatever you chose. Save the file and restart the game, check your skin to see if it looks how it should. Personally I liked it with Metallic Factor = 0 and roughness about 0.045 You can use this technique to test different image textures, just drop them in the folder and select them Another tip is to work with png files for testing, once you get what you like convert it to .dds, this way you can open the png file in Photoshop, make changes and then when you save the image the changes will reflect in the game instantly. --- Post updated --- By the way, you gotta know that even tho images are RGB, the colors may not look the same in game because the .dds files are converted to sRGB (which has less colors than RGB) and then the game re-interpret them as RGB (I'm not really sure about how is this tbh but it's something like that). Color won't look the same and sadly there's nothing we can do about it.
