Vehicle Skinning
Creating Custom Vehicle Skins[edit]
There is a helpful guide to getting started in skinning available as a Word document (.doc), or PDF (.pdf) below.
Getting Started[edit]
Custom vehicle skins let you have individual and unique paintjobs on your vehicles.
Currently the easiest way to get started on making custom skins is to look in to your darkwind\darkwind\data\shapes\vehicles folder for the vehicle you want to create your skin for and edit a copy of one of the default .jpg textures for it.
Vehicle Skins must be in jpg format, max file size 200k, and must be the correct dimensions for the chosen chassis type.
For most chassis this means 512x512, but there are a few that still use 256x256 textures (but that is likely to change eventually)
Previewing Custom Skins[edit]
To preview vehicle skins that you're working on: you need to copy the new skins into the correct folder for the vehicle, e.g. for the fire engine this would be: /darkwind/data/shapes/vehicles/fireengine
Then, run the game client and enter "showmodels" as your username. Don't log in, but click on the Vampire picture that's overlaying the login panel. This brings up a window allowing you to choose a model and skin to view.
You can set the 'accessoriesScale' field to "0" and the 'wheels scale' to "0 0 0" if they're annoying you. Choose a model then a skin.
Texture Wrapping Explained[edit]
TODO: explain how UV texture mapping works and how and what happens to the skin in the game
Tips/Tricks for making good skins[edit]
Software[edit]
Links to some free image-editing programs:
TODO: What do you Mac people use?