Soccer Manager 2018 Png

So with Football Manager 2018 changing the template for 3D kits now is a good time to release a guide on how to make them.
Before you start you will need a couple of things:
- 3D kit template - I've attached a simple one that includes thegeneric kits to get people started, eventually I expect the communitywill release a fully featured one with more templates, but theseinstructions should apply to community templates as well.
- An Image editing program that can read psd files. The easiest programto use is Adobe Photoshop however it is expensive though you cangenerally get a free 30 day trial from adobe's site and I'm not sure ifit's still available but they made Photoshop CS2 free to downloadseveral years ago and that should still have all the features you need,or if you have a program you are used to that will read the files thenyou can use that. Alternatively The GIMP is an open source alternative which I will use for this guide.
- Another thing you might want to do is extract the 3D kits includedwith the game as you can use these as a guide and if your editingskills are good enough you can pinch bits from them for your kits. TheLicensed Kits are found in the graphics.fmf and once you have extractedthat they will be located in graphicspictureskits3d folder.Whilst the Generic Kits are found in the simatchviewer-pc.fmf file andonce extracted are located in thesimatchviewer-pctexturesgeneric_kits folder.
The Template
Attached below is an image of the template

The above template includes the following files:
- The above Preview Image.
- xcf format template for use in The GIMP.
- psd format template for use in Photoshop.
- blank config file used to get your kits into the game.
For the 3D kits you'll see that the various kit parts are split intopieces, this is because unlike with the 2D kits the game uses this fileas a mesh to wrap-around the 3D player, and whilst it might look a bitdaunting at first the advantage you have with 3D kits is you don't needto be as exact or detailed as the 2D ones as the game will discard theunneeded parts of the file (the black area).
Overview
Starting at the top the Shirt is the first part of the template on theleft is the Shirt Front area (orange) and next to it is the Shirt Back(yellow) which wraps around to form the shirt. The Blue bit is for theCollar and the black null area is where the sleeves connect to the shoulders.
The circle is generally where the club Badge goes, next to that is arectangle for the shirt Logo and underneath where the shirt front textis where the Sponsor will generally go but I'll come back to these inmore details later.
Underneath this on the left we have the Under Armour (grey) area thisis the thermal clothing players wear underneath their shirts and isgenerally seen when players were short sleeves, so for the most partyou want this to use either shirt colour or the sleeve colour dependingon the kit.
Next to that we have the socks (purple), on the left is the Right Sockwith the right half of this being the front of the sock, whilst to theright we have the Left Sock with the front of that being on the leftside. Note that the socks are mirrored not duplicated so remember thislater.
At the bottom we have the shorts (pink) and again like with the shirtthe left side is for the front with it wrapping around to the back andagain I've put some markers in for the general position of the badgeand logo.
Finally taking up the right side are the sleeves and one of the newfeatures of the new template is that you can now set the short and longsleeves separately.
At the top are the Short Sleeves, the shoulder area is in the hump atthe top with the bottom of the sleeve being near the elbow and likewith the socks you'll noticed they are mirrored - the right hand sideof the Right Sleeve is the front of the player with the left area beingon the players back, whilst for the Left Sleeve the left side is thefront of the sleeve and the right side is the back.
Below these we have the Long Sleeves and they are largely the same asthe short ones the shoulder area is at the top with the bottom beingnear your hand. With them again being mirrored the Front of the RightSleeve is on the right and the Front of the Left Sleeve is on the left.
How to Edit the Kits
After downloading the file from the above link you should have a psdfile and xcf file, open one of these files in the program of yourchoice, if using GIMP open the xcf file, if you have Photoshop openthe psd file (the contents are the same, GIMP just doesn't save to psdwell) if using another program open which one plays best with thatprogram, you may also want to re-save the file into the native formatthat supports layers for the program you are using. For this guide Iwill be using The GIMP.
The first thing I would do in GIMP is from the Windows Menu is tick'Single-Window Mode' so it acts more like a normal windows program. Theother thing I would do is close the Brush dock in the bottom right handcorner, you can do this by clicking the arrow and from the menu select'close tab' repeat until all three tabs are closed and the bottom dockdisappears freeing up more room for the layers dock which should nowtake up the right hand side.
Now you have set your program up you want to look in the layers panelwhich should be on the right hand side of the screen and should be fullof various different layers. Bascially each part of the kit is splitinto it's own layer which makes it easy to recolour and switch variouspatterns and bits on and off.
At the Bottom of the layers panel should be a Base folder, expand thisif it isn't already expanded and you'll find a layer for each part ofthe kit - Shirt Front, Shirt Back, Sleeves, Socks, Shorts and UnderArmour.
Above the Base Folder you'll see other folders called Shirt, Sleeves,Socks and Shorts these contain the various patterns stripes, hoopsetc..
How to Recolour the Layers
To create kits the main thing you'll be doing is recolouring the various layers to match the colour of your teams kit.
To recolour in the GIMP first you want to select the layer in thelayers panel on the right. For example first we are going to recolourthe shirt front and back.
To do this expand the Base Folder in the Layer panel and then selectthe Shirt Front Layer, then at the top of the Layers panel make surethe checkerboard next to the Lock text is locked (should have a blueborder around it) as we want to lock the transparent areas so they staytransparent when recolouring.
Now on the left hand side in the Tools panel select the 'Bucket FillTool' then just under that is a black rectangle and a white rectanglethese are the currently selected foreground and background colours.Click the Black rectangle and in the colour popup select the colour youwant to use, as we are doing the shirt colour you'll generally want theteams main colour, in this example I've picked Red. What you can alsodo is click the White rectangle and assign the teams secondary colourhere, which saves you having to manually select the colour each time(though if your kit uses more than two colours you'll need to changeone eventually).
Underneath this is the Tool Options box and you'll need to make acouple of changes here first under Fill Type select 'FG color fill' or'BG color fill' depending on which colour you want. Then in AffectedArea select 'Fill whole selection' as we want to recolour the entirelayer.

Now just click on the Shirt Front area in the image area and the shirt should be recoloured to red.
NOTE: If using Photoshop theseinstructions are slightly different, to Recolour you still select theLayer in the Layers panel but instead of selecting the fill tool rightclick on the layer and select 'Blending Options' then in the popupwindow tick and select the 'Colour Overlay' option and in the colour(red) box click it to select your colour. Then click ok and your layershould be recoloured. If using another program you'll need to find thatprograms equivalents to either of these options.
Next we want the Shirt Back, Sleeves and Socks all to be red as well sorepeat the above steps - select the layer in the layers panel and asthe bucket tool settings should be saved click on the area to recolour.(Remember you need to have the layer selected to recolour it).
For the Shorts we are going to make them Black, so select the Shortslayer, now on the colour selector on the left select the BG Colour(which should be the white rectangle) and change that colour to Black.Now if you press Ctrl and Click the shorts will take the BG colourwithout you having to switch them in the Tools Panel.
One thing I would recommend when colouring the kits is don't use thefull basic colours, they tend to look a little bright in game so I tendto mute them a bit so when using black instead of setting the RGBvalues to 0,0,0 I'd use 18,18,18 for Red instead of using 255,255,255use 248,0,0 etc..
Finally don't forget to recolour the Under Armour, for this I'd usedthe sleeve colour as that is where it would generally show in game,you can also make it slightly darker or lighter to differentiate from theactual sleeves.
How to Add a Design to your kit
Now you know how to recolour the layers, next we need to add the shirtdesign, so if you expand the Shirt folder you will notice ~60 layers.
These layers contain the basic shirt layouts from the games DefaultGeneric Kits. From the name and the thumbnail you can get an idea ofwhat each layer looks like, whilst the number corresponds to thegeneric kit number they were taken from, so if you look at the DefaultGeneric 3D or 2D kits you can match the patterns up.
To turn these layers on you need to make them visible, and what we are going to do is create a striped shirt.
So what I want you to do is select the layer called '3 Shirt - Stripes'and when you hover over the layer you'll notice two boxes appear to theleft, if you click on the left box an eye icon should appear whichdenotes the layer is visible and one your shirt some Green Stripesshould have appeared.

Next we are going to make the Stripes White, so from the left click onone of the colour boxes and change the colour to white then click onthe stripes and they should become white.
What you can also do is combine layers to create other shapes andpatterns, for example we want our shirt to have a solid area where thenumber is on the shirt back so next select the 'Shirt - Number Box'layer make it visible and recolour it to the same colour as the mainshirt front.
The next thing you need to be aware of is the Layer order. Items at thetop of the layer panel list appear on top of the layers below them. Forexample as the Number Box is above the Stripes it appears above themwhilst the Stripes are above the Base Shirt so they appear on top theshirt.
To rearrange the layers you can either drag the layer from the layerspanel or click the up/down arrows at the bottom of the panel, forexample move the Number Box layer below the Stripes and notice how itdisappears. For the most part you shouldn't need to re-order the layersbut it is a handy tool for creating advanced patterns and also savesyou from having to be too accurate about the stuff that is hiddenbehind other layers. So before you go any further move the Number Boxlayer back to the top of the Shirt sub-folder.
For the Sleeves you do the exact same thing, this time have a look inthe Sleeves folder and turn on the patterns you want. To go with theStripes we are going to turn on the Stripes option and make that whiteand turn on the Short End and make them black.
Notice with the sleeves all four are linked so recolouring onere-colours the others, if you want one sleeve to be a different colourthen select the Half Layer and recolour. And again you can also combineseveral patterns, for example you can turn on the shoulder stripe, Halfand both End layers.
Now pick the shorts and Sock patterns you want. And to finish off thebasic kit design set the collar colour and as the collar should alwaysbe on top of the other kit patterns make sure the Collar layer stays atthe top.
The other thing you don't need to both about is the designs of thevarious layers spilling into the unused Background area, as this stuffdoesn't get populated in game it doesn't matter how messy your actualgraphic looks like.
Adding Logos
To add logos such as Badges, kit logos and sponsors you follow the samepattern. If you look in the logos folder I have included someplaceholder graphics to give you the rough position of where to putthem, with the sponsor generally going over the 'Shirt Front' text,though the exact positioning will depend on the pattern you use and theshirt you are creating as the positions tend to be slightly different.
To move the item first select the layer, then select the Move Tool and either drag it with the mouse or use the arrow keys.
To source the various logos you'll need to find them yourself, forbadges getting them from logo packs is the easiest way, kit logos caneither be sourced from the internet or you can take them from other2D/3D kit templates, for sponsors you'll need to search the internetfor them.
Once you have you logos open them into a new file, if you cannot find aclean version then you can follow this old logo guide to clean them up.Next adjust the canvas side of the image so it reaches the edge of yourlogo, then you need to resize the images (Image -> Scale Image inGIMP) with the exact size depending on the shape and style of the logosyou are using but you can use these sizes as a guide:
Badges - Maximum dimension of 48 pixels.
Logos - Between 25 and 35 pixels.
Sponsor - Maximum width of 150 pixels.
Once you are ready to copy your logo onto your kit, select the layerfor the logo then goto Edit -> Copy. Then go back to the your kitimage and select Edit -> Paste As.. -> New Layer. Or select thelogo layer and drag it over to the Kit File and drop it onto the kit.This should create a new layer in your Kit file. For best results makesure the layer is in the Logos folder and then drag it around until itis in position, then repeat for the other logos. If you want extralogos for the shorts, socks or sleeves then right click on the layerand select duplicate layer. To rename layers right click and select'Edit Later Attributes' doing this should help you keep track of theitems. Once you have positioned the logos hide the example logos byclicking the eye in the layers panel.
Finishing Up
Now your kit should be looking how you want we just need to do a bit ofhousekeeping. First hide the top layer called 'Text - Hide when done'so the various bits of layer text is hidden.
Next select the Background Layer right at the bottom of the file andrecolour it to the Shirt Colour, this isn't that important but it justensures any gaps between the layers are filled in.
Now we need to save the file to use in Football Manager 2018, firstjust save the file normally as we'll want a version of the file withthe layers preserved, but before saving if you are still working withthe initial template file use the Save As option and give it adifferent name.
To save as a png file you need to Select File -> Export As. Then inthe bottom right of the dialog box where it says 'All Export images'select the PNG image option, and click Export and in the popup justleave the options as default.
If using Photoshop then select the 'Save For Web' option and select png-24 as the file format.
And congratulations you have just created your first 3D kit. Now you need to do it all again for your teams Away and Third kits.
How to Get Your Kits into the Game.
To get your kits into the game you will need to create a config file oradd some entries for your kit to an existing file. To save you sometrouble I have included a blank config file with the templates.
So open up the config with Notepad (or your preferred xml editor) andyou will need to paste in the following line for each kit you want toadd:
<record from='FILENAME' to='graphics/pictures/team/UNIQUE_ID/kit_textures/KIT_TYPE'/>
FILENAME - is where you enter the name of your graphic, for best results use short simple names in your kits for example alt_home.
UNIQUE_ID - is the ID of your team, you can get this from the editor from the the titlebar in game with ID's turned on.
KIT_TYPE - will be either home, away or third.
For example I made an Altrincham Home kit called alt_home so my line looks like:
<record from='alt_home' to='graphics/pictures/team/601/kit_textures/home'/>
When done save the file and copy the config file and your kit(s) intothe graphics folder inside your User Data Folder which by default islocated at:
DocumentsSports InteractiveFootball Manager 2018
If the graphics folder doesn't exist at that location that just createit, where within the graphics folder you put them doesn't matter aslong as they are in the same folder, though it is generally good tohave some order to your graphics folder so the various config filesdon't overwrite each other with most people sorting by type, nation andthen division.
Then load up the game and go into Preferences and turn off the Skincache and reload your skin. If the Skin cache was on you might need toexit and restart the game for the new kits to be loaded. Then when younext play the game should be using your new kits.
For a quick test if you have already played some matches with the teamthen you can use the View Match option on the Main Menu to quickly testyour kits are working, just load a pkm of a match where you werewearing the kit type you replaced and if you did it correctly the matchshould use your kit.
And below you can see my Altrincham kit in game and whilst the newtemplates are more detailed than in the past you still cannot see asmuch detail as the 2D kits even at the best zoom so their isn't thatmuch need to bother about them getting all of the intricate patternsexact.
Advanced Options
This template is just a basic one to get people started, if you haveexperience (or want to learn) you can alter the various layers to addnew templates, the other thing you can do is take bits from thelicensed 3D kits and cut out and recolour the bits you want using theabove information you've learned. You should also be able to reuse somebits from 3D templates from past versions, though you'll likely need tomess around with them to fit the new template.
Also once the wider community has released a more detailed template theinstructions here can be applied to that and with the extra options andexperience you should be able to create some better kits.
This guide should also give you the basic information to create 2D kitsas the instructions are generally the same you've just working from adifferent template, though for them you need to be a bit more carefulas the game shows everything in your graphic.
If you have any questions then the best place to ask them is in this thread in the Skinning Forum at the Official SIGames Forums where I can be found mostdays.
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