CHANGING SKINS

TUTORIAL

I/ What do you need:

– A non-custom version of Tekken 3 iso– CD Mage– Tim Viewer + Tim plugin for Photoshop– Photoshop (or other photo editing program)– PPF-Studio– PPF-O-Matic

II/ How to proceed:

1) Organisation

If you don't want to lose time you'll have to be very organised. Here is a way to prepare your workspace:

Desktop→ Tekken3 → Original Textures → Anna → Anna P1 → Anna P2 → Anna (Gold) → Bryan → Bryan P1 → Bryan P2 → Eddy → ... → WIP Textures → Anna → Anna P1 → ... → Finished Customs → idem → Clean Files (Tekken3.iso + TEKKEN3.BNS) → Customs (Where you store the .ppf files you make)

ADVICE: Do the same folder arborescence's in your image library (see why at p.5)

2) Extract the files

Open CD Mage→ File → Open (Select your Tekken3.iso and chose M2/2352 track for File type) → In the left window click on « track 1 [Mode2/2352][PSX_CD] » → In right window right-click on TEKKEN3.BNS → Extract Files (choose Clean Files directory), extract then close CD Mage

Open Tim Viewer→ File → Scan RAW File (Select TEKKEN3.BNS)

Once loaded:→ File → Save Multiple Files → Enter the number of the textures you want to extract (See the list p.15)

WARNING!– The .Tim files are extracted in the same folder than TEKKEN3.BNS.

Transfer them into the « Original Textures → Character corresponding » folder.– Extracted .Tim files come with a timextracts.txt. Don't lose this file or you won't

be able to insert modified files back in TEKKEN3.BNS after editing. So copy it in the same folder.

– Proceed character by character. Don't extract all the files in one time, or you will have to insert all of them even if you edit just one texture.

ADVICE:

In Tim Viewer, you can convert .tim into .bmpConvert→ TIM to BMP → Select folder where .tim are extracted

Then in your folder choose these display options:– Large icon– Regroup by type

Thereby you can see immediately what the texture refers to (face, skin, clothes...).

3) Edit the textures

There are 2 kinds of textures:

– 4 bits textures which can have till 16 colours in their colour table

– 8 bits textures which can have till 256 colours in their colour table

WARNING!– You can't add a 17th colour on a texture that has already 16th colour in his

table. I'll show you next how nevertheless you can do this kind of thing.

– In some cases, textures share the same colour table (especially with 8 bits ones), so you have to save the edited colour table and load it for each texture that uses it. [Hence the interest of making the same folder arborescence's in your image library to classify your edited colour tables (.act files)]

– Black from 000000,010101...to 070707 is transparent! The darkest black you can have on screen is 080808. Remember this give you the possibility to erase some stuffs (Dr B's glasses or remote control, Yoshi's sword...).

– Don't alter the name of bmp file. Otherwise you'll have an error while converting it back to tim.

III/ Making of a custom outfit (Basic technics)

An example is always better than words, so i'm gonna show you step by step how to realise this very simple custom (Eddy P2). Once you'll be familiar with basic editing, we will see more specific technics.

Let's start !Extract Eddy's P2 textures (6830-6853), place them into your « Original Textures » folder and copy all of them (+timextracts.txt) into « WIP Textures » folder.

Open the shirt textures (6833, 6834, 6837 and 6840) and start working on 6833:– Image → Mode → Colour Table

There are 2 colour scales, but the shirt uses the first one (from 1 to 11), so select it:

Now you can change the start and ending colours

– Choose the start colour → Ok → Choose ending colour → Ok (Respectively 0e2370 and 3954b9 in this custom but you choose what pleases you)

Now you have your edited texture and colour table. You can see colours that are not used by this texture so it means they are by an other (not that obvious in every cases).

If you check, you see that texture 6853 has purple too. Open it and look at the colour table. It's the same used by # 6833.

Reopen edited colour table of # 6833 → Save (Eddy P2 folder in your image library) → Name it « CT 6833/53 » → Save → Ok

On texture 6853:Image→ Mode → Colour table → Load → « CT 6833/53 » → Ok

We are good with blue parts of the shirt

In the same way, open # 6834, create a white colour scale and note the first and last colour of it. Then open # 6840, and change the colour scale using the first and last colour that you just noted. (for this custom 858c88 to d1d8d4)

Thus you won't have any colour difference between these two textures, even if they don't use the same number of colours.

Repeat this operation for # 6837. You can change the colours of text as you wish (If you choose blue, copy-paste some blue from # 6833 for a better coherence).

Last thing to edit are the shoes (# 6843)

You can see that the pink colours are not in the right order. That happens sometimes but here it's easy to have a good result anyway. (We will see how we can do when this happens on 8 bits textures).

Here is the final result.

Now that all the textures are edited and ready for the custom, all we have to do is insert

them back into TEKKEN3.BNS and then into Tekken3.iso

IV/ Insert the files

– Open Tim Viewer → Convert → BMP to TIM– Copy-paste Tekken3.iso and TEKKEN3.BNS from Clean Files to Tekken 3 folder– Tim Viewer: → File → Scan RAW File (Select TEKKEN3.BNS in Tekken 3 folder)– While loading, Open CD Mage → File → Open Tekken3.iso– Copy-paste all the files from your « WIP Textures → Eddy P2 » folder to Tekken 3

folder– Tim Viewer: → File → Insert Tim Files (only timextracts.txt will appear, select it)

→ Ok → Close Tim Viewer– CD Mage: on right window, right-click on TEKKEN3.BNS → Import File (Select

TEKKEN3.BNS from Tekken 3 folder) → Ok– While loading, delete all the texture files you've pasted in Tekken 3 folder– Close CD Mage (or you can't open the iso with epsxe)– Check you custom !

This is what you get if you don't apply the edited colour table of # 6833 to # 6853.

No changes → YOU LOSE !

V/ Create and Insert a .ppf file

1) Create PPF File

Open PPF-Studio→ PPF File (Output) (Chose your Custom folder and enter the name of custom file) → Check Include Undo Data (1)

→ Original File (Select Tekken3.iso in your Clean Files folder) → Patched File (Select Tekken3.iso you've edited (Tekken 3 folder)) → Scan whole file (2) (3)

→ Create PPF-Patch → Quit

WARNING!– (1) If you don't, then you can't remove the patch from the iso– (2) By selecting this option you have to proceed that way:

Insert 1 custom → create 1 ppf patch → delete the edited Tekken3.iso and TEKKEN3.BNSCopy-paste Clean Files in Tekken 3 folder Insert 1 custom → create 1 ppf patch → ….

If you add several customs on the same iso and then create a ppf patch, this file will contain all of them and you won't have a separate patch for each character.

– (3) Scan from … to... is not a good idea because it's not the texture number you have to enter but the position of the files on the disc and that's the better way to make mistakes

2) Insert the Patch

Open PPF-O-Matic→ ISO File (Select the one that is in your epsxe → Iso folder) → Patch (Well... select the custom you want to insert) → Apply (check Apply Undo Data Patch if you want to remove a custom)

ADVICE:

If you have to install a lot of customs, put your iso file in the same folder than the ppf files. It will save you of annoying back and forth (go to iso folder, then go to patch, then go to iso...).

VI/ Other modding technics

1) Add new colours to colour table and integrate an image

For this example, we're going to work on # 6834 (Eddy P2) and add Jin's tattoo on it.– First, find an image of Jin' tattoo (find one with white background, it's easier)– Open it in Photoshop and open # 6834 too– Resize your image to fit with the texture (32*64): Image → Size → Changes– Change mode: Image → Mode → Indexed colours → Palette (Local Perceptive)

Enter 3 colours, without transparency.

– Note the black (# 0d0d0d) and gray (# 868686) colours and go to texture # 6834– Open colour table

Now we have to add the 2 previous colours to # 6834 colour table.

In some cases, 4 bits textures don't use all the 16 colours, it's also true for 8 bits textures.

This texture uses only colours from 1 to 8, so it's possible to add 8 new colours (blue colour scale) and draw on it.

But this texture (# 6834) uses 16 colours so we have to choose which ones to remove.

First Method (Hard way):– Open one by one each colours, change them and see how much they are used by

the texture (choose flashy colours, it's easier to see)

– Save your changes– Now, paint over #7 using colour #6 and paint over 14 using colour #13 (Pen tools)– Change #7 in # 0d0d0d and #14 in # 868686 (black and gray from Jin's tattoo)– Open Jin's tattoo colour table and put the white in transparency– Copy-paste the tattoo on texture # 6834 and it's done.

Second Method:

Open # 6834→ Image → Mode → RVB ColoursCopy tattoo on it (no need to change mode in 3 colours, reduce and white as transparent)On # 6834 again:→ Image → Mode → Indexed Colours (Palette: Local / 16 colours / without transparency)

WARNING!– This method change a bit the colours and change the order in colour table

With the first method, if you're not satisfied with the background colour (white), you can easily change it. Just select all the scale, create a new one and replace 0d0d0d and 868686 at their right place (# 7 & # 14). With the second method you have to start back to the original texture.

Here 1 is the original texture and 2 is the new after change RVB → Indexed colours.These texture have exactly the same colours but not the same order in colour table. If you apply colour table #2 to texture #1 you get this:

So remember the order in the colour table is important.

2) Edit texture using effects change

You can also modify texture using some effects changes. For example the following custom was created using negative effect.

You can use as well luminosity, contrast, colour change...

WARNING!

– Use this only on 4 bits texture. Otherwise on 8 bits, your character's skin and hair will be affected too.

– Note the changed you've done (luminosity : -30 / contrast : +20 …) and apply the same to each part of costume you want to modify, or the result won't be pretty.

ShinkenFight