Skin Tutorial

Well here it is, everything you need to know to start skinning C&C Renegade.

What you need

XCC Mixer a tool developed for opening .dat/mix directories for extracting of files.
Adobe Photoshop you can use PSP, but i recommend using Photoshop
DDS Photoshop Plug-In so photoshop can handle the files you will be throwing at it

What you need to do with it

XCC Mixer - Once installed, find the location of always.dat in the sidebar, browse through the 1000's of files to find what you need and extract.
Adobe Photoshop - Simply run the installer.
Plug in for Photoshop - after downloading, place this file into your photoshop plug-ins folder - "file formats"

Skinning

Step 1: Open XCC Mixer and locate the .dds file you want to edit. Once found, right click and select extract.

Step 2: Open photoshop, click open and find the .dds file you saved on your computer. Once opened you will see a prompt box saying "Image has MIP Maps, Display them with the image?" select "NO"

Step 3: Now you're ready to start editing your skin, the world is your oyster; get playing around and be imaginative.

Step 4: When you're finished and wanting to save; select file - save as. Choose your directory and press "save", a Nvidia prompt box now appears with a lot of confusing fields and radio boxes. The only thing that needs to be changed here; in the top left corner you can see "Save Format" for character skins and vehicle skins, No Alpha (DTX1) (for stealth units, hud file etc DTX5 is needed) needs to be selected followed by again pressing save.

Step 5: Finally copy and paste your edited skin file into your Renegade Data directory.

Any problems, feel free to show your face in the forums and ask
Guide written by LeeumDee