Ever notice how uPaint makes the most horrible pic of your character? Well, here's a quick and easy way to make a better one using nothing more than uPaint, any image editor and UnrealEd...
First of all, load your skin into uPaint. If you haven't skinned it in uPaint, it doesn't matter as you need only apply your textures to the model you've skinned.
You should have a window that looks like this;
Easy enough, now on the right where the character is in 3D view, zoom in twice on the face 'til it looks like this;
Press and hold the Alt key, then tap the Prt Sc (Print Screen) key. This will copy the entire screen to the clipboard. Open your favourite image editor and make a new blank image. Paste your clipboard contents into it.
Then, using the crop tool or selection tool mark out the area you'll be using as your portrait. Trim it down 'til it's 512x256 (height and width) and try keeping it centred.
You should then have the pic for your portrait (save as Portrait.TGA). You can easily change the grey background and dress it up a bit if you want.
Your end product should then look like this (on the left is a default game portrait and on the right the new one);
See how they're pretty similar? Easy, right.
Now open UnrealEd and in the texture browser window, open your skin's texture package. Goto file-import and browse to where you saved Portrait.TGA Click ok and you'll see it on screen. Right-click and choose Properties, click the + to the left of Texture and goto LODSet - Change this from LODSET_World to LODSET_Interface. Close that window. Right-click the image again and go down to compress, click on DXT1 for maximum compression. Wait a moment and then save the texture file.
[NOTE] In this example I called the Portrait exactly that. If it's called something else you may need to change the .UPL entry for Portrait. See the thread here
I'll continue this or edit if need be when I've more time
First of all, load your skin into uPaint. If you haven't skinned it in uPaint, it doesn't matter as you need only apply your textures to the model you've skinned.
You should have a window that looks like this;
Easy enough, now on the right where the character is in 3D view, zoom in twice on the face 'til it looks like this;
Press and hold the Alt key, then tap the Prt Sc (Print Screen) key. This will copy the entire screen to the clipboard. Open your favourite image editor and make a new blank image. Paste your clipboard contents into it.
Then, using the crop tool or selection tool mark out the area you'll be using as your portrait. Trim it down 'til it's 512x256 (height and width) and try keeping it centred.
You should then have the pic for your portrait (save as Portrait.TGA). You can easily change the grey background and dress it up a bit if you want.
Your end product should then look like this (on the left is a default game portrait and on the right the new one);
See how they're pretty similar? Easy, right.
Now open UnrealEd and in the texture browser window, open your skin's texture package. Goto file-import and browse to where you saved Portrait.TGA Click ok and you'll see it on screen. Right-click and choose Properties, click the + to the left of Texture and goto LODSet - Change this from LODSET_World to LODSET_Interface. Close that window. Right-click the image again and go down to compress, click on DXT1 for maximum compression. Wait a moment and then save the texture file.
[NOTE] In this example I called the Portrait exactly that. If it's called something else you may need to change the .UPL entry for Portrait. See the thread here
I'll continue this or edit if need be when I've more time
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