Hello again!
After posting a FTU skinbase some time back, I thought it'd be a good idea to make a little tutorial on how I swap colours on skins.
As you can see, the original is in grey -- not the optimal skin shade, unless you're playing a Kathar!
All of my skins feature palettes I used to shade the skin, which can be really handy if you're needing to swap colours around. You can find the palette by opening the skin in paint.net, or the 2D mode in MCSkin3D if you use that.
The first step to swapping around the existing palette we've got on the greyscale skinbase is to make sure you've got a palette for YOUR skin! If it was made by me, chances are there's one on the top left. If not, it's pretty easy to make one -- all you have to do is colour pick the existing shades from your character's skin, and/or make some new shades to match the amount on the greyscale skin.
The greyscale skin has 8 different shades, so you'll need 8 shades total on your palette as well.
Here's the palette from the skin above, with some added shades to match the number on the greyscale skin.
With that step done, we need to bring the file itself into an image editing program. For this tutorial, I'll be using paint.net -- other applications work, but this is the one I usually use and is most familiar to me.
Now, click the magic wand tool on the toolbar at the left.
Then set your "tolerance" to 0 up at the top by dragging it all the way to the left. This will make sure each pixel you're selecting will ONLY select that colour, and not ones that are kind of close to it shadewise.
Next, hold down shift and click on the first grey shade you're wanting to change. I usually go left to right, or right to left. When you hold 'shift' while clicking, it'll select every instance of that shade.
Now that I have all of the lightest shade selected, I'm going to select my colour picker tool from the toolbar on the left.
With this tool, you'll want to pick the colour that corresponds to whichever shade you selected on the greyscale palette. In this case, I'm going to select the palest shade of skin tone.
You'll also want to set the tolerance at the top to 0 if it isn't already.
Now, with the paint bucket tool, you'll also want to hold down 'shift' and click inside one of the areas you have selected. Holding shift will fill all of the selected areas with the colour, so all of that shade will now be filled in!
Hit CONTROL + D to deselect everything you have selected.
Now you've got the first shade filled in! You just repeat this process with each shade, doing it one at a time until the whole thing is swapped to the colours you'd like.
Ta-da! Now just save the file, and you'll be all set!
I usually use colour swapping instead of hue-shifting for my skins if I'm looking to do a specific set of colours for my skins. You can do this with pretty much anything skinwise, and can make your own palettes of existing colours from a skin you have if you want to swap it around too!
Here's an example of the same head, one with colour swapping and one with hue shifting -- hue shifting isn't always terrible, but I find it can really wash out some of the differences between shades, and might not always match the colour I'm going for.
I hope that helps you on your skinning journey, and increases the usability of your skins!
After posting a FTU skinbase some time back, I thought it'd be a good idea to make a little tutorial on how I swap colours on skins.
As you can see, the original is in grey -- not the optimal skin shade, unless you're playing a Kathar!
All of my skins feature palettes I used to shade the skin, which can be really handy if you're needing to swap colours around. You can find the palette by opening the skin in paint.net, or the 2D mode in MCSkin3D if you use that.
The first step to swapping around the existing palette we've got on the greyscale skinbase is to make sure you've got a palette for YOUR skin! If it was made by me, chances are there's one on the top left. If not, it's pretty easy to make one -- all you have to do is colour pick the existing shades from your character's skin, and/or make some new shades to match the amount on the greyscale skin.
The greyscale skin has 8 different shades, so you'll need 8 shades total on your palette as well.
Here's the palette from the skin above, with some added shades to match the number on the greyscale skin.
With that step done, we need to bring the file itself into an image editing program. For this tutorial, I'll be using paint.net -- other applications work, but this is the one I usually use and is most familiar to me.
Now, click the magic wand tool on the toolbar at the left.
Then set your "tolerance" to 0 up at the top by dragging it all the way to the left. This will make sure each pixel you're selecting will ONLY select that colour, and not ones that are kind of close to it shadewise.
Next, hold down shift and click on the first grey shade you're wanting to change. I usually go left to right, or right to left. When you hold 'shift' while clicking, it'll select every instance of that shade.
Now that I have all of the lightest shade selected, I'm going to select my colour picker tool from the toolbar on the left.
With this tool, you'll want to pick the colour that corresponds to whichever shade you selected on the greyscale palette. In this case, I'm going to select the palest shade of skin tone.
You'll also want to set the tolerance at the top to 0 if it isn't already.
Now, with the paint bucket tool, you'll also want to hold down 'shift' and click inside one of the areas you have selected. Holding shift will fill all of the selected areas with the colour, so all of that shade will now be filled in!
Hit CONTROL + D to deselect everything you have selected.
Now you've got the first shade filled in! You just repeat this process with each shade, doing it one at a time until the whole thing is swapped to the colours you'd like.
Ta-da! Now just save the file, and you'll be all set!
I usually use colour swapping instead of hue-shifting for my skins if I'm looking to do a specific set of colours for my skins. You can do this with pretty much anything skinwise, and can make your own palettes of existing colours from a skin you have if you want to swap it around too!
Here's an example of the same head, one with colour swapping and one with hue shifting -- hue shifting isn't always terrible, but I find it can really wash out some of the differences between shades, and might not always match the colour I'm going for.
I hope that helps you on your skinning journey, and increases the usability of your skins!
