Author Topic: Simple Replica Skinning Technique  (Read 4785 times)

Offline Scrap Daddy

Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« on: August 18, 2011, 12:58:12 AM »
So basically Ben Purse has been bugging me how I make my skins on my replicas. I told him to screw around with transforming in photoshop, but apparently is too hard. Instead how having to give a guide for someone to use once I'll just show everyone what I do. In order to do this you need some photo editing software with these features. I'm using Photoshop cs3.


Step 1: Finding the replica.
Well for this method of skinning you need a decent picture to start with. If you can't find any good pictures of the bot, your out of luck using this method. You can however do what Sonny_Resetti does for the most part. You can hand draw the skin, but I'm too lazy for that type of thing. :P


For this example I'll use the bot Janus:


Step 2: Choosing what to transform.
Now that you have some nice pictures to build the replica with, you need to decide what you are going to transform. For Janus I'm just going to use the whole front panel, though it sometime looks better to skin the bot transforming all logos or anything on the bot separated. If you can, try an find as many logos as you can on google before transforming an angled shot off a bot. 


Here I use the Polygonal Lasso tool to isolate the front panel. You can also use the magnetic lasso or the lasso to get off entire panels or logos.



Step 3: Separating the image.
At this point if I was actually building a Janus replica I would have the template of the bots skin open in Photoshop re sized to 520x520 for maximum quality, but I'm not so I'm just moving it to a new window opened in Photoshop.





Step 4: Scaling and skewing.
Now go under edit and find transform. Then, skew. I personally use ctrl + t and right click to get to scale and skew.





After a combination of skewing and then scaling to get the size right for the skin template, you should end up with something like this.





Not too bad for like 2 minutes, eh? Should fit nicely on the front panel of a Janus replica or maybe a component and the more time you put into the skin, the better it will turn out. Once you get used to how the image is affected by skewing, it becomes really easy and skinning an entire replica takes like an hour.

If you really want the bot to look nice, you can use a combination of textures and other things off of google to give the bot a good look. Like for the front panel, I could have just skewed the Janus face or even found something similiar on google and just used the same shade of orange font over an aluminum texture. It's essentially what I do for my IRL bots and makes the look fairly life like.


Thanks for reading and keep replica building alive!!! I'm sure there are others who know of better ways to use photoshop than I do (everything I know was basically self taught by messing around) and feel free to right up a paragraph showing how to use Photoshop and I'll edit it right in.






-Scrap

Offline freeziez

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Re: Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2011, 01:07:08 AM »
obligatory battlebots 5 comment

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Offline Ben Purse

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Re: Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2011, 01:08:26 AM »
AWWWWWWWW THANKS SD <3

Offline Ben Purse

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Re: Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« Reply #3 on: August 18, 2011, 01:16:29 AM »
DP. After I lasso it it doesn`t break off.

Offline Scrap Daddy

Re: Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« Reply #4 on: August 18, 2011, 01:20:09 AM »
...use this to move it to the other window


Offline Ben Purse

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Re: Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« Reply #5 on: August 18, 2011, 01:23:01 AM »
What?

Offline GoldenFox93

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Re: Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« Reply #6 on: August 18, 2011, 03:39:51 AM »
That's because it's on the wrong layer- make sure it's set to the same layer as the picture, otherwise it won't work.

Still, if I can get my hands on a copy of Photoshop, I could see this being incredibly useful for rep-building in the long run. Thanks Scrap  :approve:



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Offline Thyrus

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Re: Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« Reply #7 on: August 18, 2011, 04:08:53 AM »

Offline That Robot is a Spy!

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Re: Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« Reply #8 on: August 18, 2011, 07:28:50 AM »
You rock Scrap. I'd give you rep if I could.

Offline FOTEPX

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Re: Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« Reply #9 on: August 18, 2011, 07:34:43 AM »
*Bows*


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Offline Mr. AS

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Re: Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« Reply #10 on: August 18, 2011, 08:47:01 AM »
sticky plz.
How you make Alarm Clock Pizza is:
Step 1: You buy an alarm clock from the store, and then you have to break it and put it in the sauce.
Step 2: Fold the sauce in 5 slices and put it in the dough.
Step 3: Paint the eggs with a pitcher of a clock showing what time you want to wake up and eat pizza for breakfast.
Step 4: Put the eggs in the dough.
Step 5: Make it flat into a round shape and draw the time you want on it.
Step 6: Put some old steel to prevent other peple from stealing it.
Step 7: Make it flat and cut into 60 slices 1 for each minute in 1 our.
Step 8: Put in the oven set the timer to 30048813.2884 seconds and put the temperature on 'Volcano' setting.
Step 9: If you think it is take to long, then get yor alarm clock and set it to now so that it will ring and you can take it out.
Step 10: Take it out uv the uvin wen it is redy and go to bed. In the morning eat pizza and also eat yor hands bi mistake.

Offline JoeBlo

Re: Simple Replica Skinning Technique
« Reply #11 on: August 18, 2011, 10:10:38 AM »
Its in the tutorials section.. it doesnt need to be sticky as it wont get lost among chatter threads..