Skin Retexturing: How to begin and how to end?

[Amit_]

There appears to be a great resource of tutorials for starting a new mod project categorized by topic here, but what I'm looking for is specifically in regard to skins. I don't want to create a mod, just a simple retexture.

Let's say I wanted to replace the textures of the 33rd Regiment of Foot with different textures. What is the exact process that I would need to do in order to make that happen? How do I get them to show up in-game? What should I watch out for when making these changes? What can go wrong? How do I keep the skins up to date and working for new version of Napoleonic Wars?

Thanks for any responses.

[kpetschulat]

Download/Buy a program like Photoshop or GIMP2. Download a .dds program corresponding to the x of OS. So, if you have a x64 system, download a x64 .dds plugin. All you're then doing is altering the colors how you wish in the .dds files. But, be careful! Some of the NW .dds files are shared across various nations. For example, the French and British line regulars share pants. However, a unit like the Bavarians in the France faction are totally unique. You can see what I mean here, in my mod for the Bavarian units. I change the colors and what not to creat different regiments.

Hope this helps, if you have any other questions, ask. I'll do my best to help out, always!

[BSM 'Shut up' Williams]

I knew you'd come.

[Amit_]

Download/Buy a program like Photoshop or GIMP2. Download a .dds program corresponding to the x of OS. So, if you have a x64 system, download a x64 .dds plugin. All you're then doing is altering the colors how you wish in the .dds files. But, be careful! Some of the NW .dds files are shared across various nations. For example, the French and British line regulars share pants. However, a unit like the Bavarians in the France faction are totally unique. You can see what I mean here, in my mod for the Bavarian units. I change the colors and what not to creat different regiments.

Hope this helps, if you have any other questions, ask. I'll do my best to help out, always!

Very helpful, thanks. So if I want to edit the 33rd's pants, then I must take the most recent version of the universal pants dds and then edit the 33rd's pants to my liking? How do I identify which set are the 33rd's in the dds file? I don't suppose they are labelled, are they?

And yes, Baktech, I have finally decided to try my hand at simple retexturing until I can eventually work my way up to some basic modelling. Maybe along the way I can figure out how to get the 44th skins to work, too.

[kpetschulat]

Most of the .dds files are labelled according to what unit they are part of. For example, the .dds for the Bavarian musicians is bavariadrummer.dds (As I mentioned before, some units share the same color map, so the fifer and drummer both use the drummer .dds file). You also have some files like french_infantry.dds, coldstream.dds, etc.