How to Mod - Skins

# How to Create a Skin

1. To add a skin to your mod, enter a name for it and click ‘Create’. Your new skin will now appear in the skins list.

2. Your new skin is currently empty, so you will need to make some textures for it. This is done in an external image editing tool, such as Paint.NET, Gimp or Photoshop.

3. You can find sample textures (in **.png** format) in the “**Assets/PayloadStudios/TerraTechModTool/SampleAssets**” folder including the base skin for each corporation. (This path is relative to your Unity project, but you can also find this folder in the Unity Project window. Once you have found the folder, right click on it and select “Open in Explorer”)

It is a good idea to copy all the textures for the particular corporation you are making a skin for to your mod directory (“**Assets/Mods/{Your Mod Name}/Skins**”), and rename them to the name of your skin.

The skin consists of 4 textures and an icon;

**ALBEDO** - RGB colour texture defines the base colour of the skin.

**METALLIC** - Grayscale texture defines how metallic the surface is. Most surfaces will be either white (non-metal) or black (metal)

**SMOOTHNESS** - Grayscale texture defines how smooth the surface is, from black (rough) to white (very smooth)

**EMISSIVE** - RGB colour texture defines any areas of the texture that will emit light.

**ICON** - RGB texture that is shown in the skins palette in game.

4. Once you have copied the textures, open them in your image editor and make the edits you want to make - To help you with this, you can find layered **.psd** files in **TerraTech Modding Resources**, in the **Skin Templates** folder. The **MASK** folder in each template file shows you where the primary and secondary colours are.

*5. Save your textures as **.png** They should be 1024x1024. Alpha (transparency) is not supported.*

6. Now back to Unity, select your mod in the **Mod Designer**, select your skin in the **Inspector** window and click “**Edit**” to bring up the skin editor. For each of the different textures, there is a slot on the skin editor panel; click “**Select**” on the texture slots to assign each of the textures required.

7. You can now drag and drop your textures into the appropriate texture slots in the Mod designer, or click the ‘**Select**’ button on each slot and choose your texture from the list that appears.

8. When you have assigned all of the textures, select the corporation that your skin is for and add a suitable name for it. This is the name that will appear in the skins palette in game.

9. Now click ‘**Generate Previews**’. This will create a preview image of your skin applied to a tech from the selected corporation and the combined Metal+Smooth texture (This is automatically generated form your separate Metal and Smoothness textures, in a format that the game requires)

10. If you see a red cross in the lower right of the **Mod Designer**, there are errors that need to be addressed. A message above the cross will tell you what is wrong.

11. If you see a green tick, your skin mod is ready to be exported and tested in game.

Refer to the **Official Mod Support** guide for details of how to export locally for testing, and how to publish your mod on the Steam Workshop.