The textures for the Smackdown models have a unique format. There are different textures which are applied to a single model which have different functions i.e
- A color texture which is the skin, clothing and other detail
- A normal map which gives the model an illusion of depth and controls how the lighting is reflected of the model. E.g. with facial hair the surface of the model looks rough instead of smooth
- A texture called AO which controls how the shadows are rendered on the model. In most cases it is not necessary to edit this file.
All of these textures have an alpha channel. You only need to edit the alpha channel of the color texture as this alpha channel controls the sweat and wether certain parts of the models is displayed or not e.g which parts of the models hair is rendered.
There are many methods to edit the color texture but I am going to describe the method which I use.
a) Creating your color dds file
Firstly you need to download a program called Dxtbmp. This program allows you to edit the alpha channel and the texture individually in any editor of you choice. The first thing you need to do when you start the program is select the editor of your choosing. I use paint.net because it is free and saves the images in the correct format.
Once you have configured dxtbmp, open your dds file in it. It will display the texture and the alpha channel. Clcik on “Image - send to editor” or “Alpha – send Alpha to editor” to work with either of these. Don’t close dxtbmp as you will need to use it again later.
When working with the alpha channel, you will notice that the hair has a format which determines what parts of the hair texture will display. The parts of the hair on the alpha channel which are white will display and the parts which are black will be transparent. You can make models bald in this manner.
When you are done editing the files in your image editor, save it in the default format which is bmp. In paint.net you are given the option of selecting the color depth of the bmp file. With the texture, select “Auto-Detect” with the alpha you may need to select “auto detect” or 8 bit. In most cases Auto-detect will work for the alpha channel will work but in a few instances, dxtbmp will not save the updated alpha channel if it is not 8 bit.
Go back to dxtbmp and select “Image - reload after edit” and “alpha-refresh alpha” to reload the edited files. Finally save the dds file by selecting “file-save as” and ensuring that you save as dds dxt5 format.
b) Creating your normal dds file
Luckily in paint.net there are plugins which create the normal maps for you. You will need to search for and download the normal map plugin for paint.net separately though.
To create a normal map of your texture, you need to first create a black and white version of your new edited color texture (the texture with the skin, details and not the alpha channel).
Get the color texture into your image editor using dxtbmp as described in the first part, in my case I use paint.net. Click on “Image – Black and white” in paint.net and then “Effects – color – normal map”. You will be presented with x.y.z coordinates for creating the normal map, adjust these whichever way you like.
The final texture will need to be resized as the color texture is usually 2048x1024 and the normal texture is usually 1024x1024.
You will need to paste the new normal map over the old one. Use the method described in the first part to do this.
