How to skin for Halo PC

[Philly]

How to skin for Halo PC
Right now, I have a lot of spare time on my hands, so I decided to help people with no experience with HMT.

In my opinion, skinning is one of the most fun parts of of PC modding. You don't need any expensive programs, but photoshop helps.

Tools required
Here are the tools you will need to do a basic skin job:

• Halo Map Tools v3.5 (HMT)
  DOWNLOAD
  DXTbmpDOWNLOAD
  Photoshop FREE TRIAL

Now that you have all of your tools, it's time to get skinning!

• 1) Open HMTv3.5
  
  2) Click file>Open, and browse to:
  C/Program Files/Microsoft games/Halo/MAPS
  OR
  Wherever you installed Halo.
  
  3) Open up bloodgulch
  
  4) Click on the plus sign next to the bitmap tab:
  
  
  5) You will see a load of filenames.
  Scroll down to: vehicles\banshee\bitmaps\banshee
  
  
  6) Click the "Save Texture" Button. Save to somewhere you will remember. I have a "Textures" folder on my desktop, where I store all my HMT extracted DDS files.
  
  7) Minimize HMT and browse to where you saved the DDS file. Double-click it and it should open with DXTBmp:
  
  
  Click the Paint Icon on the far right:
  
  
  9) Browse to where you installed photoshop, or find the shortcut. By doing this, we are telling DXTBmp to open the texture with photoshop, not paint.
  
  10) Double click the image in the middle of the screen. Photoshop will load and you will be able to edit the texture like any other picture. Keep the size the same and everything will be fine.
  I will not go into the art of skinning in this post, I will just go into how to import and export correctly.
  
  11) When you are happy with your new texture, save it in photoshop. Go back to DXTBmp and go to: Image>Reload after Edit. Your new texture will be displayed.
  
  12) Click file>save>DDS texture. Keep it in the format that DXTBmp tells you, otherwise there will be problems. Save it with a different name, so that you don't overwrite the original. It is now ready to be put back into HMT.
  
  13) Click "Inject Texture". Browse to where you saved your new file. HMT may say something along the lines of, "The texture you are trying to import is larger than the existing data!". As long as you are sure that you didn't change the size, click no, always.
  
  14) HMT has one final thing to say: "Texture was successfully imported!"
  
  15) Play Halo, and all the maps with the banshee in will will have your new skin on!

[willy]

TYVM!!!!!! This is soo cool i have my own banshees now!!!

[skyhighkilla44]

is there anything else besides photoshop that we can use if our free trial is over cause I dont want to pay for photoshop just to mod

[JK-47]

GIMP. It's free, you just have to find a .dds plugin.

[hiheyhello]

i believe hereis one i was going to download it but then i left and forgot the link, im pretty sure someone posted a link on this site.

[dethfromabuv]

can someone tell me where 2 find the reticles to change em thnx

[Philly]

ui\hud\combined\bitmaps\hud_reticles

Open them in Photoshop and make the main image and the alpha the same. Save in DXT 8888.

[valdark]

Thank you for the Tut.

This one helped me immensely. I had been using the .dds in photoshop with mixed results due to the MIP's.

This is so much simpler and the results are better.

[Philly]

And it's old. I never use this method anymore, but it's great for beginners.

[donkeymanda]

THANKKYOU!!!!