Official Guide to Creating Weapon Skins

This guide provides a full walkthrough for creating custom weapon skins and getting them into the game! The guide covers downloading required files, creating your new content, viewing your content on in game weapon meshes, and submitting your content for review and possible inclusion into the game.

You can download the weapon skin files here:

Primary
Download from GDrive[drive.google.com]

Free Mirrors
Location 1[www49.zippyshare.com]
or
Location 2[fs12n2.sendspace.com]

MIRROR 1[www49.zippyshare.com]
MIRROR 2[www.sendspace.com]

The files are sorted by weapon with each weapon folder containing:
- obj files
- UV unwrap files
- Color coded unwraps for easier part reference

Each weapon has a file for the main body. Additionally, some weapons also contain files for iron sights and other weapon components. A successful weapon skin requires a main body file. While completing the other files is optional, we recommend it for a more comprehensive look to your custom weapon skin.



We also provide all of our base weapon textures for use. You can find them here: http://forum.americasarmy.com/discussion/6175/aa-pg-base-weapon-skins

Creating a new skin is as simple as opening the UV file for your chosen weapon and painting over that file.

First, open the UV file in the painting tool of your choice. The UV file shows a broken up wireframe view of the weapon. This lets you know where on the image you should paint to affect a specific portion of the weapon.

Once you locate the areas of the weapon you want to paint, simply paint over top of the UV file. Save your final results as a .png file.

The Full Editor provides an easy means for viewing your weapon skin on the actual weapon mesh. Open the editor and pull up the Content Browser. Right click in the main panel and select 'Import'. Import your .png file in to a new Package.

After importing your weapon skin, search for the folder containing the weapon you are modifying. Find the Material Instances for the weapon skin with 'Skin1' in the name. Note each weapon has multiple Material Instances with 'Skin1' in the name. Each correspond to a specific portion of the weapon. For example, the M4 has a material instance used for the main body of the weapon and an additional material instance used for the weapon's iron sights. They are named 'M4_1P_Body_Skin1_INST' and 'M4_1P_IronSights_Skin1_INST' respectively. It also has a Material Instance for the third person version of the skin (it has '3P' in the name), but you do not need to worry about creating this portion of the weapon skin. Open the 1P Material Instance that corresponds to the portion of the weapon skin you are working on.

On the left pane, find 'DiffuseMap' property under the TextureMaps rollout. Replace the texture there with your newly imported weapon skin. You will now see your texture on the weapon mesh in the right pan. Use the mouse to rotate the weapon around and check out your work!

If you own Photoshop you can work in a different manner. Instead of opening the weapon's UV file, open the weapon .obj file in Photoshop. This provides a 3D view of the weapon within Photoshop! By double clicking the layer under diffuse you can view the UV file for that weapon. This allows you to paint on the UV layer and then immediately hop over to see how it looks on the weapon! Or, alternatively, you can paint directly on the weapon and your work will show up on the UV layer as well.

Once you are happy with your skin you can submit it for review on the forums. A submission includes:
- Your new unwrap files for the weapon
- An image showing the weapon skin on the weapon in editor

This means you should have between two and four .png files to submit, depending on the weapon you created the skin for. Upload these in the Weapon Skin Challenge section of the official forums: HERE[forum.americasarmy.com]

Be sure to check out the 'Example Weapon Skin Submission' to ensure your submission is correct.

This allows the community to view your submission and comment on it. Skins that are well received by the community and the development team will be added to the game for all players to use! We are looking for high quality skins that fit with the general style and aesthetic of our current weapon skins.

Here is an example of one of our M4 skins and how it looks in game.