Now, I want you to ask yourself: How do I see my skins?

If you have to move the file and open the SDK version of Depth every time you want to test your skin, especially if you're trying to perfectly place a single detail in some obscure spot, you're going to be really, really bored and frustrated.

Luckily, Maya has just what we're looking for! If you set it up properly, you'll be able to preview your skin without needing to open Depth for every minor change!


First, we're going to need to import our model. Hopefully, you already have your model in a FBX or Obj format, and import it through 'File->Import...'. If you don't have a model to start with, check our other guide:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=894277435
Or, if you already have one in the scene, move on!

Now, before we get a little ahead of ourselves, I want to make sure you know that emissives and lighting effects don't work well/at all in Maya, so if those are important to you, just preview the object in the UDK instead. Like this:



When you import your model, you should have something like this:



As you can tell, I'm using the default bangstick model for this tutorial, but feel free to use any other model that you're successfully textures before.

Select your model, not the skeleton, and hold right click. A menu should pop up. Hover over the 'Assign New Material...' option, and release your right mouse button. From the menu of shaders, select 'Lambert'



That will assign a new material to your model, named lambert(#). Whilst the name isn't important for what we're trying to accomplish, feel free to rename it!

Now, on the right side of the interface, you should be able to find the attribute editor. If you don't see it/removed it, you should be able to enable it under Display->UI Elements in Maya 2016.

Once you have located and opened the attribute editor menu, navigate to your lambert material and locate the little checkerboard texture button and press it.



A menu should pop up, allowing you to select a texture. Since we're using a diffuse texture, we want to select 'File'. However, if your diffuse is a photoshop file, select that instead.



Now a file is assigned to the color property of your material. It's empty, however, so let's go change that! Click the little folder button in the attribute editor of your file.



From there, navigate to and open your diffuse texture file. Here, I'm using my apollo bangstick diffuse as a demonstration.



That's it.

Is your texture not looking right? Try Automatic UV mapping by selecting your object and using UV->Automatic.

You've probably seen some fancy glowing effects on the workshop before and want to try it yourself! Or maybe you're just like me and the idea of glowing skins just sounds super-duper-duper-duper cool to you!

Well, first, we need to understand some basic concepts about emissives. I get it, learning sucks, but just hold on, ok?

Now, for my example, I'm going to use this awesome-looking APS rifle by Ruvik:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=880245477

Make sure you got subscribe and give it a nice rating - I mean, it's beautiful!

Back on topic:

This APS rifle has everything you would expect in a skin - diffuse, specular, and normal maps - but it also includes what we're looking for - an emissive map!

Now, here are the texture maps I want you to see:

The Diffuse:



The Emissive:



Now, here's the concept I want you to understand:

Any color other than black on an emissive map will show up as emissive.

That's it! Notice how, on the emissive, only the areas that Ruvik wanted to glow are colored in as red, while the rest of the texture is black. Remember, black areas are interpreted as having no emissive.

Now, let's import our own emissive texture!

... Well, I would, but I am far too lazy to create another skin just for this tutorial, so we're going to go abuse Ruvik's content again!

Now, I have set up a fake mechatronic skin for this tutorial, and imported the diffuse already. This is what it looks like right now:



We can now import our emissive texture by right-clicking and going to 'Import...' and selecting your emissive map. Now, I'm going to be honest with you, I'm not quite too sure on the 'proper' settings to use when importing an emissive, but this is what works for me!



Now, our texture should be imported and ready to tinker with!



Open your material, and a window should appear, with your material already textured onto an object, like a sphere. We're going to need to change some settings here.

Copy&Paste your emissive texture into the 'Emissive Map' property and enable it, along with 'Emissive Strength'.

You can see the properties and the effect on the material here:



Notice the slightly glowing red lights.

You can change the value of the 'Emissive Strength' property, but make sure it's not too high, or you end up with something like this...



...and that's it!

Is there something that you like on the workshop, that you would love to experiment with? Maybe you want to see how others make their skins/models? While I'm not sure if this is ethical, you could always just unpackage it in the UDK and take a look!

It's scaringly easy, so here we go!

First, subscribe to the skin in question that you want to tinker with on the workshop. (Make sure to give it a positive rating too, thank the creator for his/her help!)

Then, you need to locate the location of the package that steam downloads. For example, on my computer, this is located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\274940.

When you locate the .upk package of your target item, copy it over to the respective directory in the Depth SDK.

For example, an ADS item might go:
Steam\steamapps\common\Depth\SDK\DepthGame\Content\Weapons\ADS\Skins

After that's done, open the Depth Editor and navigate to the location of the package in the Content Browser. Right click on the package you want to see, and click 'Fully Load'

That's it!

Please don't abuse your newfound power. Stolen skins are very easily spotted and will not be taken lightly by the creator.