3. Customization - DragonSurvivalTeam/DragonSurvival GitHub Wiki

■ The ability to fine-tune your dragon's appearance is one of the very deep and interesting features of Dragon Survival. Each dragon has its own set of textures, which you can combine and change the colour of individual parts. I have painted over 500 unique textures so you can find something you like. And if not, you can create a skin yourself! You'll even be able to choose body types for your dragon in an update coming very soon!

● Dragon Editor

■ /dragon-editor command for fast access or craft dragon altar.

■ Immediately after selecting a dragon species you will be offered to customize its appearance. There are many different functions inside the editor. Here are some of them that you should pay attention to:

Hint at the interface with important information.
Select the background color for the editor.
Hide/return interface to get a better view of the dragon.
Back to default appearance.
Randomization. A very useful button if you want a unique look and don't know where to start.
Cancel or return the action. By default, it remembers only 10 actions.
Selecting a growth stage. You can customize the appearance for each growth stage. It is possible to copy one stage to all stages.
Part selection. You can switch between them with the arrows or click on the name and see the list.
Change the color. Here you can adjust the saturation, brightness or make the part glow.
Change the animation to get a better look at the dragon.
Return the default dragon position and animation.
Slots for saving the dragon's appearance and copying to other growth stages. The appearance is automatically saved to the selected slot. Hover over the hint to see more information.
You can change the size of the dragon slightly. But it doesn't affect the hitboxes and may slightly disturb the dragon's breathing animation.
Save and start the game.
Return to dragon species selection.
Old textures. Optimized version for texture packs. Used for checking skins and increasing fps. Disables dragon editing.
You can disable the wings display. The flight will still work. Only for 1.16 and oldest 1.18.
On 1.19+ you can choose body types for the dragon.

■ If you have old textures enabled, you cannot change the dragon's appearance. This point is needed to optimise the game or to test resourcepacks. For example, when creating skins.

■ You can help us and add new parts for dragons. Read more about it here.

■ In case you want to look really unique, I have something to offer you too - Custom Skins!

● Do I have to pay something to create a skin?

■ No :)

■ Skins is a completely self-drawn texture for your dragon. Not to be confused with the texture you create in the Dragon Editor! You can create a skin for yourself absolutely free. But if you want to support the development and free yourself from suffering, you can order a skin from the author of the project. I also allow you to make custom skins for others and get paid for it.

■ If you want to order a skin from Black Aures and support the development, message me in discord (BlackAures#7759/blackaures). The cost of buying a skin is 100$. A bonus to the purchase will be unlimited access to patreon content and early access.

Payment wia Boosty. Paypal payments accepted.

● How to make a skin yourself?

■ Required: Blockbench, any archiver, any graphic editor.

Download and Install BlockBench. If you don't know how to use BB, read the tutorial or video.
Download SkinMakerKit (updated 20.06.2024). Unzip the file to your desktop or any other convenient location.
After you unzip everything, open any dragon model with Blockbench. No click to create a "new texture" and no edit cubes!!! It's gonna break everything.
You can create textures with a third-party graphic editor rather than in BB, if you feel more comfortable with that. I use SAI 2 and Aseprite. Many of my friends use PaintNet.
Paint.
Read the entire wiki in its entirety before you get started. It's really important. Don't forget to also re-read this if you took a break. I update this section frequently.

● - Rules for making skins

■ Rules that MUST be followed. Otherwise your skin will not be uploaded.

Check name of files you send! Make sure file name does not end like "BlackAures_adult.png.png". Not all computers display the file format fully. Use this.
Do not make a texture exceeding the default 512×512 size. Uploading larger textures will cause problems for the skin repository. But smaller textures (256x256) are allowed.
DO NOT ask to use other people's skins!!! They belong to their rightful owners only. You will be permanently banned everywhere if I find out you did it.
We also do not allow duplicates to be posted. This is due to technical difficulties and protection against theft of skins from other players.
You cannot use the default Dragon Survival dragon textures from Editor as a skin. If you have too many borrowings, the skin will not be accepted. Just use the altar to edit the appearance.
Do not use the model and textures from Dragon Survival anywhere. It is forbidden not only because of copyrights.
Only sfw, no 18+ or shocked content. If you find that someone's skin is nsfw, let me know - I will remove the skin and ban that person.
Test the skin with a texturepack (included in SkinMaker!), rather than uploading unfinished content. Skins with obviously unfinished textures (e.g. technical layers, UV, half repainted standard dragon textures and so on) will not be uploaded.
The game is case-sensitive, do not put capital letters where they should not be. Nickname must be exactly the same as yours. Example of correctly signed skins below on screenshot.

● - Tips for making skins

Be prepared that it may take 3-5 days to create a skin. Prepare plenty of tea or coffee.
Be sure to mirror membranes, mane, spikes, and other decorative areas. This is not shown in BB, but if you forget to do it, your dragon will have a hole on one side instead of spikes in game. Set the settings to make sure you haven't messed up on this point: File -> Preferences -> Settings -> Preview -> Render Sides:Outside
You can only change the texture, not the model. If you turn off box visibility, it will not remove the texture. Never use hiding cubes to "remove" textures. Any changes to the model will NOT affect the texture.
Carefully stain the areas on your model you think you won't see. The animations will show it. Disassembled_model is your friend.
You can make different skins for different stages of dragon growth. If you have one skin for all stages you need to create 3 copies with different names. But you can make a skin for one-two stage. But you can't create skins for different species.
The eyes must be drawn on the eye block and not extend beyond the boundary of that block, otherwise the blink animation will not work. Also, don't forget to draw a closed eye underneath it on the head box.
Do not draw or leave garbage in the free parts of the skin. If the model is updated, your skin will have artifacts!
Don't leave any junk pixels on the texture. If you don't see a pixel on the dragon model, but it is on the texture, remove it. Use the UV-checker to check a borders of a cubes.
Be sure to save the texture separately! To do this, right-click on it in the column on the left and "save as". It is better to make multiple copies of a texture. Remember that BB likes to destroy files.
Don't change UVs. You're not going to like what you see in the game, and you're going to have to redo absolutely everything from scratch. After opening the model, do not click "Create texture". Just take an existing texture and edit it.
Step back 2 pixels to the left of the first wing segment (which is closer to the body) so that there are no visual bugs during flight. The screenshot below shows the correct version of the wings. Not relevant for 1.19.2+.
Say "No" to translucent pixels. Only 100% or 0% transparency. It looks okay in BB, but it looks very bad in the game.
Don't forget to draw details for other body types, even if you don't plan to use them (paws, flippers, small wings).

■ Is your skin coming out too blurry and not looking like pixel art? Don't feel bad! There's a pretty quick way to automatically reduce the number of colors for a skin with Aseprite. This program is available on github or as a paid version. I personally use Github.

Open your texture in Aseprite;
Create palette from current sprite (look screenshot)
Select the number of colors you want to save (range from 100 to 200).
Make sure that the alpha channel is taken into account (check the box)
Ok
In the upper panel select "Sprite" and look for "Color Mode".
Click Indexed.
That's it. The number of colors is reduced. Save png.
If you are not satisfied with the result and want to change the number of colors, just press Ctrl+Z and repeat.

■ If you don't have this program or have any difficulty, you can ask me to do it. If I have time, I will help you. Remember that reducing the number of colors is not a cure-all. You'll probably still have to do a lot of polishing and color refinement, because Aseprite doesn't always make a nice palette.

● - Glowing skins

■ You can make glowing parts for your dragon. This texture is superimposed over your skin and glows at night like the eyes of spiders and endermen. But. Be warned at once: THIS CAN MAKE HARD WORK! If you don't have a good grasp of graphics editors, DO NOT create glowing parts.

Glowing textures are textures separate from your skin. They are signed the same way as the main texture, but with "_glow" added at the end (e.g. "BlackAures_adult_glow.png"). That is, if you send all the stages of growth and each has a glowing part, then you send the author 6 different files.
The texture with "_glow" should have only what is supposed to glow and nothing else. That is, if you want glowing pupils, you erase everything, but save a pupils.
Now for the hardest part! What you will never see with your eyes, but what is in the file code. This is the color of transparency. Transparency is NOT the absence of color. Color is RGB, and transparency is the Alpha channel. That is two completely different parameters. The background of the skin must be exactly 000 in RGB and 0% Alpha channel. You can check the background color by pressing the dropper on the canvas with transparency. The all-black background is also a working option, but many shaders will break this.
You can check the glowing skin in the game by using the standard DS texture pack + _glow (cave_adult_glow.png). Emissive textures that are in Optifine (_e) use a different rendering, which has significant differences from ours. Do not use "_e", only "_glow" is allowed.
Because of shaders and code, the color may be quite different from the one you originally drew. The same goes for brightness. Alas, nothing can be done about it. If you are uncomfortable with this, it is better to delete this file on request to Black Aures. Be sure to check this on the texture pack before uploading. Otherwise you may have to wait a very long time.
Inside the SkinMaker there is a resource pack §eResourcePackForSkinCheck.zip. Use this before you send the skin, so you don't have to wait for a long upload.

● - Skin testing

■ Please don't be lazy to test your skins before submitting. It is very easy to do:

Find the file §eResourcePackForSkinCheck.zip in SkinMaker.
Open it and replace the .png files inside with your skin. You don't need to rename it, it should be cave_adult.png or any other kind of dragon. If you are not using glow, remove them.
Open the folder "resourcepacks" (in the root folder of the Minecraft game) and place there §eResourcePackForSkinCheck.zip.
Open the game and enable this resourcepack (move it to the right) in the game settings.
Go to the world and write in the command line /dragon-altar.
Select the dragon species for which you changed the skin.
MUST check the "old textures" box and save your selection.
Grow the dragon to the desired growth stage (most likely adult) using hearts or command /dragon cave 3 true.
You are beautiful.

● - Skin loading system

■ After you have finished your skin go to our discord server and find ■ Black Aures ■ (blackaures). Admin in the list of members. She will be at the top of the list and her private messages are ALWAYS open. Check your own settings and server privacy settings if you are having problems with this.

1. Send this form to Black Aures:

■ Minecraft Nickname:
■ Confirmation that you have read the Rules for making skins and agree to them:

2. Rename the png file by your Minecraft nickname. Examples:

Example Player 1 - YourMinecraftNickname

YourMinecraftNickname_adult.png
YourMinecraftNickname_young.png
YourMinecraftNickname_newborn.png

Example Player 2 - yourminecraftnickname

yourminecraftnickname_adult.png
yourminecraftnickname_young.png
yourminecraftnickname_newborn.png

Example Player 3 + glow for adult and young stage - YourMinecraftnickname

_YourMinecraftnickname__adult.png
_YourMinecraftnickname__young.png
_YourMinecraftnickname__newborn.png
_YourMinecraftnickname__adult_glow.png
_YourMinecraftnickname__young_glow.png

3. ■ Attach this one .zip (or .rar) file with all the correctly renamed png's. Check several times for correct writing! No need to package each file in a separate zip. Keep in mind that loading skins is done manually.

■ The fact that your skin is uploaded will be shown on the github. Look for your nickname among these commits. I don't write upload reports, so keep track for yourself. The process usually takes between 1 days. If you are waiting longer than 1 day, email me again in discord. After my uploading, full restart game. Your skin will be auto-installed.

■ Common mistakes: sending pictures instead of zip, changing capital letters in nickname (write 1 in 1 as in the game), making up new growth stages (baby stage does not exist), missing “_” (underscore) in nickname or growth stage, sending skins of other users, ignoring the point of agreement with the rules and nickname in the form.

● - Skin does not appear!

■ Before you say that your skin is not displayed, read this:

FULL restart game. Close it and open again. This should also be done by the other players.
Make sure your skin has already been approved and uploaded. Check here.
Make sure you are at the right stage of growth (adult) and right species. If there is no texture, there will be no rendering.
Check your nickname in game and nickname you confirmed to the BlackAures. You can find out what your nickname is by writing something in the chat room.
The checkboxes in the skin panel must be enabled.
Disable the texture pack if you have it enabled.
The altar should not have "old textures" checked.
Try different versions of the mod for testing.
Your skin may have been rejected. If your skin does not appear in the game within 2 days, write to Black Aures (blackaures)
Don't abuse the "Random" button in the skins tab. GitHub doesn't like too many requests and has limited them to 30 requests per hour.
If your skin can't be seen by other players, they should also do all of the above (turn on displaying player skins around in the first place).
If you are from China, try vpn or changing the language in the game (English-China, China-English). If that doesn't work, I can't do anything for you.

■ Remember that you can only update the skin once every 3 days to avoid spamming with 1-2 pixel microfixes. Test the skin thoroughly and good luck to you!

● - Deleting or rename a skin.

■ You cannot delete or rename a skin yourself. Write a BlackAures#7759 request.

● - In-game setup

■ When you open dragon inventory at the top there is a tab to open the skin settings. Features:

Enable/disable your skin for a certain grow stage. This change will be seen by all players around.
Enable/disable other players skins.
See what your dragon looks like at different stages of growth with "Your dragon" button.
Look at other players' skins with "Random" button. You CANNOT install them yourself. Only look.

● Known bugs

When you first load a skin there may be a slight lag.
In some Chinese countries there may be a problem with the display of the skin on old versions.
The fact that the gui color in the editor does not match the saturation shift is NOT BUG. Stop asking!!! I'm wondering if the photoshop developers are tired of this silly question too?
DIFFERENT COLOR OF SEA DRAGON'S EYES IS NOT A BUG!!!! STOP WRITING ABOUT IT PLEASE!