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Making TGAs from RSH files: An Amateur's Guide

I think most of us can now make textures using Beroc’s WTP Tool but to do this we first need WTP files and not all models ship with these.

This guide (or story) follows how to go from RSH to DDS, then to TGA and then on to WTP. Writing is not one of my strong suits so I’m afraid you will have to take it as you find it. Hopefully some of you will find it helpful if nothing else.

As I was wanting to make a new Flamer model based on the Horror model shipped with vanilla DoW I Googled and found that Spooky had made a RSH extractor that would convert RSH to DDS files.

I downloaded the tool and clicked file, open and then navigated to the horror_body RSH file, selected it, clicked open. It displayed but not properly but on clicking the refresh button it then opened fully. Looking at the bottom of the listing in the left column, a DDS file was now listed and could be found in the same folder as the RSH just converted. Closed Spooky's tool.

I then tried to open it in Photoshop by navigating to texture_share folder in my mod folder and selecting the new DDS file but initially got an error message. After posting on the forums Compiler came to my aid and told me that I needed the Nvidia DDS Plug-in, which I already had. Instructions on how to install and use the Plug-in are also available. Also, there are the Visual Basic 5.0 Runtime files which I didn't know about.

I installed these with no problem (XP Home) and opened up the DDS files in Photoshop (6).

To convert the DDS to targa, do the following (written in Dummies Guide script as this is how I always need it):

  1. Open the file choosing All formats or DDS files.
  2. Check the image size - I got stuck the first time round as I hadn't noticed the images were 256 by default and not 512 as required, luckily EdCase pointed this out to me - and make sure the first thing you do is alter the image size to 512 x 512.
  3. Select channels and make sure the Alpha channel is selected, so there should be RGB, Red, Green, Blue and Alpha channels listed all showing the eye symbol to the left of each channel.
  4. Now choose file, save as and choose TGA format. Save as 32 bit. Save to the texture_share folder in your Mod folder. You must add _default to the end of the file name or Beroc's WTP tool won't make a WTP file from your TGAs. i.e. my file name became flamer_body_default.
  5. Don't close the file, now choose image, mode and choose greyscale. It will prompt; Discard colour information? OK! Look at the channels and you will see there is a Grey channel and an Alpha channel. Delete the Alpha channel, you want a Grey channel only. This is going to be your Dirt file and must be saved with _default_Dirt added to the end of the file name, i.e. flamer_body_default_Dirt. Again you must save it as a TGA file.
  6. There are two main options with the dirt file before you save
    1. If you are using a fixed colour texture so you don't need team colours just choose select, all and then press delete. This gives you a plain White background. Then choose save as, choose TGA and save as the dirt file as in 5. above. The _default and _default_Dirt files are the minimum needed to make a WTP file from a RSH/DDS file.
    2. This is pretty complicated and maybe better addressed in another tutorial. I'll have a quick go but this part may not be 100% accurate or there may be better ways of getting the same effect.

      If you want your unit to be team colourable you will need to make the Dirt file a different way. Do stage 5 as described then before you save the file select image, adjust, and then invert. Then image, adjust and then replace colour, select the background and make 100% light/White. This gives you a team colourable Dirt file.

      You can then make the Primary, Secondary, Trim, Weapon, Eyes, Badge files a similar way.

      Do stage 5 as described then select image, adjust and then replace colour, select the background and make 100% dark/Black. This gives you a team colourable file to use for the files just mentioned. You would just have to Black out the parts you did not want to use in each layer i.e. if the Head was going to be a Primary colour then Black out the head in the Secondary, Trim, Weapon, Eyes, Badge files etc.

      It's obviously much more complicated than this but this is the basic idea. Just look at a few TGA sets for other models and you will soon get the idea.

  7. From here I am assuming you went for 6a above.

    Open up Beroc's WTP tool and select Make WTP, navigate to and select the _default TGA you made in step 4, click open. It should say process completed successfully after a minute or two. Don't do this with the Dirt file, only the default file.

  8. Now go to the texture_share folder in your Mod folder where you previously saved the TGA files and have now saved the WTP file.

    You now need to make a RSH file for your new unit. Copy the RSH file of the unit you have copied (horror_body.RSH in my case) and re-name using the same number of letters (_ counts as a letter) I was lucky, flamer_body.RSH was the same anyway. Just right click and copy the file, paste and re-name.

  9. Back up a level and go to your Data\Art\EBPsaces\????\troops folder and copy and rename the whe, whm and lua files in the same way as you copied the RSH keeping the same number of letters.
  10. Nearly finished. Now you have to hex edit the RSH and whm files. I use XVI32 which is excellent. Open up XVI32, select and open the whm or RSH file you have just made, choose replace and then choose Find, Text String and enter texture_share followed by the name of the unit you are copying i.e. texture_share/horror_body (you could just enter texture_share/horror) then press the Text -> Hex button, then in the replace with box choose text string and enter your equivalent of texture_share/flamer_body, the name of your new unit. Press the Text -> Hex button.
  11. Press the replace all button. Save and close. Do both the RSH and the whm and you're finished.
  12. Just make sure that the following entry in your ebpsaces\???????\troops file is pointing to your new unit.
    GameData["entity_blueprint_ext"]["animator"] = "Races/Chaos/Troops/Flamer"

I hope some of you find this useful and I would just like to point out that everything here has been taught to me by others over the last 6 months. Thanks to EdCase for his help and especially Compiler who has helped me too many times to mention on texturing matters and who has an excellent guide of his own.

I only wrote this guide on IBBoard's suggestion and if you need additional information on texturing then Skins@HWT or the forums are probably the best place to look.

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