Reskinnable human models for Thief
Created by Wes Morrison (Datoyminaytah, wesmorrison@juno.com) by modifying existing Thief resources


You may use these in any fan missions you create. If you do, I would appreciate a mention.


Instructions:

Unzip to your Thief directory, preserving directory names. Then, in DromEd, change the Shape->Model property of a human to any of the following (minus info in parentheses):

r_mguard (sword guard)
r_bowman (bowman)
r_hamh4  (hammer guard)
r_ham2   (hammer worker)
r_hnovi  (hammer novice)
r_hamw2  (hammer wizard)
r_hams4  (hammer swordsman)
r_hambow (hammer bowman)
r_serv2  (male servant)
r_wo1    (woman 1)
r_wo2    (woman 2)
r_wo3    (woman 3)
r_merch  (merchant)
r_keep   (keeper)
r_fraka  (frakus, fracas, farkus, farkas, whatever his name is)
r_cuty4  (cutty)

Then add the property Shape->TxtRepl r0 and type in the path and filename of a skin. It should look something like "mesh/txt/guard2". 


Advantages:

It is quick and easy to add new skins without having to override existing ones. The effects can be seen inside Dromed immediately by changing the texture property. You can also quickly experiment with combining different existing skins and models for new effects, for instance, the model "r_merch" and the skin "mesh/txt/keep" makes a "fat keeper", likewise the model "r_keep" and the skin "mesh/txt/merchan2" makes a "thin merchant". Some skin/model combinations work, others don't, but experiment!


Disadvantages:

Your textures MUST be in "mesh/txt" (not "mesh/txt16") and MUST use the standard Thief palette. This means that on hardware the textures may be of slightly less quality than they could be if you could use both a txt and txt16 version. In practice, this doesn't seem to make a considerable difference for most images, especially if you don't have the opportunity to compare them side-by-side.


How I made them:

All the models are copies of existing Thief models with the hard-coded skin names changed to "replace0.gif", which Thief uses as a tag to know that texture is to be replaced by one specified in the "TxtRepl r0" property. The filenames I chose are similar to the originals, dropping "exp" from those that began so, and adding "r_" to the front to specify that the model has a replaceable texture. (That's not used by Thief, I just named them that way for convenience.)



