How complicated is it to create armor kits?

[Anzanel]

See thread title. I want to post something about player-designed armor kits in the Suggestions forum, but I'd prefer to know what I'm talking about (at least a little bit) before doing so :P

What's the most time-consuming part of creating a new armor kit? How many steps are there? What are some of the complications involved? Would one need to have some kind of digital art/animation degree, or can the required skills be picked up by anyone through online tutorials and experimentation? Is the software used to design kits expensive? And if so, is there similar software available for free?

Or imagine this hypothetical scenario: Turbine wants to hire someone with all the qualifications to design new armor kits, but there is a mix up in the hiring process and they accidentally end up hiring me (who knows nothing about armor kit design) instead. Which things would I have to learn in order to be able to do the job? And which software would likely be used?

Any info will be appreciated From either players or devs.

[Azhanti]

No qualifications needed, GIMP2 is free software that would do do the job. Don't know what format the games textures are in, but you may need dds and normal map plugins for it. Other than that you'd need the UV map of DDO's models. I suggest doing a search for Oblivion/Skyrim retexturing tutorials to give you some idea of what may be involved.

[IronClan]

See thread title. I want to post something about player-designed armor kits in the Suggestions forum, but I'd prefer to know what I'm talking about (at least a little bit) before doing so :P

What's the most time-consuming part of creating a new armor kit? How many steps are there? What are some of the complications involved? Would one need to have some kind of digital art/animation degree, or can the required skills be picked up by anyone through online tutorials and experimentation? Is the software used to design kits expensive? And if so, is there similar software available for free?

Or imagine this hypothetical scenario: Turbine wants to hire someone with all the qualifications to design new armor kits, but there is a mix up in the hiring process and they accidentally end up hiring me (who knows nothing about armor kit design) instead. Which things would I have to learn in order to be able to do the job? And which software would likely be used?

Any info will be appreciated From either players or devs.

I'll tell you wants involved and how to get started making a texture bitmap but first we have to discuss the conceptual idea of allowing players to put custom art in the game.

The hard part is Turbine having to vet each and every submission of a custom armor kit (hereby refered to as a "skin" which is what we call textures applied to 3d models) for:

A) quality
B) appropriateness
C) function

A) The skin needs to be good enough that other players aren't jarred out of their game immersion because you're running about in a pink and chartreuse leotard skin that looks like it was made using the solid color square tool in MS paint. Does your skin look amaturish? Does it show specular highlighting on bits that are logically reflective (metal glossy paint etc)? does it show matt/diffuse highlights on parts that are cloth or less reflective (canvas, sand blasted/worn scuffed metal etc.)?

B) It need to fit into common sense guidelines (no privite bits hanging out, no hidden cuss words or middle fingers spelled out in clever but hard to immediately read ways, like spikes and studs that form a word or pictogram?)

C) does it actually cover everything that needs to be covered during animation of the 3d model? Not private parts, but mesh solids, are there poly's that are visible in one aniation that don't have texture in another animation? Are there missing pixels that show up as odd little blinks and flashes during animations?

As far as "where to start" you might google the subject, but generally skins are created as 2d templates in paint programs, then wrapped around the 3d model by the games graphics engine. More advanced tools are harder to get into (and much more specialized) but allow pushing pixels directly on a 3d model.. If DDO were to ever allow custom user created skins they would probably have to release a template skin or set of skins that would allow directly modifying or painting "inside the lines" or within the "mask" that the engine uses to tell whats skin and whats not. Skins are human shaped, but bitmaps are always rectilinear.. So there will usually be blank or empty space that has no coloration data or is a solid color.

Perhaps the best way to get a visual idea of what I'm talking about might be to look for skin templates from games that allow freely modding... almost any PC based FPS will have skins from the game that you can download and open in your paint program of choice (Photshop, Paint Shop Pro, used to have a free version (might still?) even MS paint, can open most file formats used for textures) At first the template skin will probably look weird but you'll get the idea (it's like a bear skin rug, it looks quite different when it's not wrapped around the bear)

HTH, the real first step is just finding a paint proggy and diving into some other games skin templates just to see how things work especially if you own that game and can load the skin after changes to see what it actually looks like when it's not a bear skin rug

[Xynot2]

I wanna see all of my toons in bikinis.... well, not the Horc. NO ONE wants to see THAT.