I've been around for more than 15 years replacing textures in video games for personal use, creating skins for programs, and making textures professionally in 3d modelling and design for Industrial Manufacturing. There's some tips I've picked up on making textures (and in this case tans for AA2) that I'm going to share with you to help you create a tan from scratch. Or give new ways to approach your Tan project.
Tools
The first thing you need is a paint editor or program that can handle multiple '
layers' Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, and a multitude of other software supports layers. I personally use Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9, its an old outdated piece of software but I know its UI interface and tools inside and out so I work fastest on it instead of Adobe or Gimp.
Second you need my transparent .png versions of the Exotic Wireframe [js071845] to use as the wire frame layer to help fix seams in your tan or create your own. I cannot stress how much this can help with placement for tan lines or unique designs and patterns. It is attached as a 7zip file.
DOWNLOAD
The Basics
For starters you can't work in color. I know its a bummer. The way the game recognizes a tanned textue though is basically by black and white points. Oddly if your tan is in glorious 16million colors the game will display certain hues of colors strangely. So your better off using just black and white / monochrome to create your tans.
Files Modified
The following two .pp files contain the files within them that are usually modified or should be understood.
Code:
jg2e00_00_00.pp
jg2p_00_01_00_02.lst
jg2e03_00_00.pp
A00_00_00_XX_00.bmp Body, Legs, Feet
A00_00_00_XX_01.bmp Arms, Hands
A00_00_00_XX_02.bmp Butthole
A00_00_00_XX_03.bmp Nails on the Hands and Feet
A00_00_00_XX_04.bmp Face, Ears
Where XX is this is the slot number of the tan 00-06
Now that you know which files you'll be using the easy ones to understand are the .bmp files, they're the actual visual textures of the tan. This is where 90% of the work is done. One thing you need to know though is how much pixel depth you have to work with, which is handled in the .lst file.
The .lst file on the other hand is a monster, that single file controls a WHOLE BUNCH of values that can affect many different mods.
Alexae's hi res skin mod for example uses a custom .lst file. And almost every single tan mod created before the AA2Tantoo manager also contains a custom .lst setting which is often over written if you use the AA2 wizard. I don't even understand half of the values inside the .lst file- in fact it was such a headache for me I was begging in my head for someone to come up with a file manager for jg2e00_00_00.pp and jg2e03_00_00.pp then comes along the Tantoo manager which is the only texture manager.
For that reason I prefer to not edit the .lst and instead use AA2Tantoo .lst file pixel depth settings because it has a 'uniformity standard' for pixel depth that helps the game keep stable while playing on almost any computer.
Getting Started
To start open your preferred paint program and create a new image, the pixel width and height should match the same pixel sizes of the jg2p_00_01_00_02.lst file your creating your tan to be compatible with- which in and of itself is a pain in the ass because there are many different skin textures and tans that use custom .lst settings. Personally I favor the .lst file setting for AA2Tantoo because its the one that doesn't look bad at 1080p and has run 100% stable for me compared to some of the other mods I've used that have different settings in their .lst file.
Now for sake of demonstration I will be using AA2Tantoo's preferred pixel Width and Height which is
Code:
Pixels Taned Area
1024 Body, Legs, Feet
512 Arms, Hands
128 Butthole
128 Nails on the Hands and Feet
256 Face, Ears
The 3 main files to work on that have the most visual impact on the character are the the bmp files ending in 00, 01, 04. So to create a new tan for the Body I would create a new file that is 1024 x 1024 pixels, I prefer to create a transparent layer as the base. Then I paste my version of the wire frame as a new layer which will help me know where the edges are so I can fix seams and such.
I know it doesn't look like much but we barely started. for ease of demonstration I'm going to load up the body .bmp file from the original plant girl tan mod as a new layer. Now it is much easier now to see the female form now that we have a contrast between the wire frame and tan texture.
There are some seam issues with this tan its not too apparent in our paint program even with the wire frame on top. Using the tan in game we can see that in fact most of the seams are very close, only apparent when you zoom in close to see the misaligned edges. One of the ones that bugged me the most was the leg pattern, the inner thighs don't line up well at all- No serious look at the tan seam!
Now that you've seen that you filthy little monkey lets continue. The problem is that the 'pattern' doesn't line up perfectly around a single leg- this is has been highlighted in both yellow and purple in the picture below, you can see how helpful the wireframe is and it could allow you to make more complex patterns that are seamless. Without having to 'guess' how many pixels your off by, you can work in exact mirror detail if you so desired.
Some of you may already be thinking "so what" I know how to fix seams. Good for you! Get yourself a cookie.
Natural Looking Tan Lines
But there are other tips I have, for demonstration purposes again I will create a 'half body tan' with crisp lines. And we'll use some soft blurring we can make a more natural progressive looking tan lines instead of a 'hard' painted on look. The picture below is 3 pictures in one- the left side of the picture is the Default Tan 3, on the right hand side the upper half is 1/2 tanned body crisp lines no blurring, the lower half is the same tan with some soft blurring and looks a little more 'natural' but can probably use a little more softening.
So big whoop you say? Here's my last tip
Inverted Tan
My last and final tip you can even create inverted tans where the skin color of the girl will become the color of the tan. For this I am literally using a QR code. As you can see its blue! All I did was make the girls skin color blue, made the tan where the QR code was the only thing that would be original skin color. Unfortunately working with exotic skin colors you need to heavily tan your girls to 80% or higher depending on the color hue of the skin. So using this method you cant make 'light skinned' girls unless you want to make totally custom skins but that's another subject. This is about tans!
These are all the tips i have for now. I'm sure some people can add to this. Especially with specific information about the .lst file *eye twitch* I seriously spent almost a whole month trying to understand that file and I still don't fully.
:giveup:
Otherwise if this helps you great, if you want to shit all over this guide, meh.
