Please help on reskinning

[glenn68]

Good evening,
In the past with MSTS I did a few personal reskins of some of Dick Cowens kits. Now I want to learn the easy way with his basic GP9 kit.
What is the easy way?
I have Paint shop PRO 7
RW tools
DDS converter
Now what do I do?
What files do I need to edit and what lines once it is in .XML?
I feel once I get used to it then it will be a breeze!
Is there any easy to read tutorials out there?
Thanks,
Glenn

[secondhandhero]

This should get you started:

http://www.rstools.info/tutorials/Tutorial_Reskin.pdf

[ATSF3814]

I've never repainted Dick Cowen's GP9 so I don't know exactly which textures you'll need to edit. But I can tell you the steps I follow:

1. Go into the directory for the GP9 and make a copy of the default folder. Rename it as whatever you want for your repaint
2. Get the textures you want to repaint (whether they be ready made repaint templates or templates you have to extract from RW)
3. Do the repaint in your image editing program. I can't really help you too much on this step since I've never used Paint Shop Pro and really every repaint you do will involve different techniques
4. Save the file(s) in DDS format. Most of the textures will be saved with DXT3 compression and always generate mip maps.
5. Import your new repaint. (I'd recommend using RSBinTool for this step. It works much better than RW_Tools)
6. Use RW_Tools to open the bin file for your new repaint and change the following lines:

<Name d:type="cDeltaString">xxxxxx</Name>
<English d:type="cDeltaString">xxxxxx</English>

Replace the xxxxxx with the name of your repaint.

<GeometryID d:type="cDeltaString">BritKits\EMD\RailVehicles\Diesel\GP9\Default\Engine\[00]x-GP9_B_db</GeometryID>
<InteriorGeometryID d:type="cDeltaString">BritKits\EMD\RailVehicles\Diesel\GP9\Default\CabView\[00]GP9_cab_B</InteriorGeometryID>

Replace the Default in the path with the name of your repaint folder.

Save the bin file and then clear your blueprint cache. The new repaint you added should now show up in the assets list.

Bear in mind that Dick Cowen's GP9 comes in several variations and so it has multiple geometry and bin files in the default folder. You only need to use one set of them so once you pick which variation of the GP9 you will use, you can discard the other geometry and bin files from your repaint folder.

[PapaXpress]

Dick Cowen's kits are not for the beginning painter. If you think of it in terms of plastic model building then its a skill level 3 out of 3. In most of his kits he provides child objects to customize the engine further. This allows you to get your engine close to if not exactly like the prototype. If you are just starting our I would highly recomend Michael Stephan's 50' PS-1 box car

There are also two small tutorials here and here by styckx.

[buzz456]

I second that. I of course jumped off the bridge and did one of Dick's as my first one and near gave up. I agree with Dan that There are much less frustrating ways to start out. The RCS GP9 took me about a tenth of the time. Of course I had learned a heck of a lot by then. What Papa is trying to say is do something simple first so you are not fighting the Image maker and the demands of the game at the same time.

Buzz

[glenn68]

I want to thank all that replied. However, I am completely lost in the converson of the files and the modifications needed to the .bin to make this work.
I do have one question and that is I want to just remove the Family lines Central and the stripes from Dick Cowens default files I have. Without too much modifications to existing files what would I need to do?
I know one is the GP9-01L and GP-9H that needs to be repainted or lets say "sprayed out". I can easily use the PSP file included from the download remove the Family Lines and stripes. From there what would I need to do? I know that conversion from .PSP to .dds.

I know my topic sounds stupid but sometimes I like to run trains with just a generic locomotive without any markings other than road numbers. Something like the "black" SD40-2 that comes with railworks.

Thanks,
Glenn

[dogmouse]

Sent you a PM, Glenn. Let me know if that can help. Thx.

~R