How do you find the unit skin thingies?

I want to start skinning because its the weakest area of map-making im in, *apart from modelling, but thats to hard!* I dont like having other people working with me on maps cause it doesnt feel right with me... So i need to find out how to skin, its been a dream to skin things 'well' :D

Anyhow, i tried looking at the import manager and object editor to see if i could find those unit skins that allow you to skin the units, however i dont have to a clue where these are found, can someone point me in the right direction?

And also, can someone tell me if ill need any other program apart from Photoshop to do the job? its the only one i gots.

Loom in the Tutorials section.

Ya the tutorials are AWESOME here. I just started making maps a couple weeks ago and I've learned sooo much from other people.

Basically, if you want to find out the easiest way to export a skin to work on, just go to the downloads section of this site, find the "W3M Map Utilities" and get that. It has almost all the useful little apps, patches, fixes, plugins, and what not all rolled into one nice little package. Once you get that installed, go to the plug-ins area and open up the Image Extractor. Then you just browse into the mpq file, and look for the skin you want to edit. TO find the path of the skin you want, use the object editor in world editor to find the unit youre reskinning, double click the model value and you will see a path to the model. Usually in my brief experience the skin is the same path as the model just with a blp extension rather than mdx or mdl. Ok once you have the path, go into that Image Extractor, and just browse to that path and click the image. It should show a preview of the skin (skins look a bit odd, kinda jumbled but its cause diff. "points" of them are "wrapped" onto models and thats what skins the model). If thats the one you want, just export or save the file to a format like tga or bmp.

Than you just need to go into photoshop, paint shop pro, gimp, whatever you have and open the file. After that its up to your artistic talent in redrawing the skin :)) The tutorial section has tons of tips and tricks for making a good skin. I myself havent done a skin yet, ive just dabbled through the apps needed to see how its done if i ever wanted a skin (plus im not a very good artist :P).

Ok well once you have the skin edited and you want to test it, go back to W3M utilities, and convert your file back to .blp. Then go into the world editor, open up import manager, and import the file. Now you need to double click the file once its imported and change the path to the original skins path (so the model knows where to look to get its skin). Now just restart world editor and then when you get back in try inserting one of the unit you reskinned into a map and it should come out with the skin you made :).

This is a really easy process, hardest part is just actually DRAWING a skin that will look good on the model you're using. I suck at it big time, although once I become proficient enough at triggering, terraining, etc I might dabble in it a bit more.

GOOD LUCK :)

-Huh

PS- i realize its just easier to point people at the tutorials but I had a little free time and thought id tell you the easiest way to do this in my own words. Good luck man and let me know if this helped you any :)