Workshop Guide - Custom boards

This guide covers creating a custom board model using blender and an image editor. Since theres not many of us here at the moment, feel free to contact me at hgodden00@gmail.com for any help.

0. Things you need

- Skaterift content is made using Blender. You can get the latest version of Blender from steam, this guide is for version 3.4 and above.
- GNU Gimp or similar image editor.
- Download the custom_board.zip
- An installed copy of Skaterift of course.

1. Installing exporter addon

Skaterift comes with the addon in its game files, we just need to install it. This addon script gets updated between skaterift versions. Here are the steps to install it into Blender:

Go to edit>preferences, and open the addons section.

Press the install... button at the top right, and browse to the Skaterift game files. Inside the folder named tools is the script blender_export.py to install.

If you don't know where it is, you can go into your Steam Library, and rightclick Skaterift, selecting Manage>Browse local files.

Now just search for Skaterift .mdl exporter from the addons list, and enable it.

2. Configuring the template

Firstly, Open the .blend file from the board_template zip.

Open the side panel in the 3D Viewport, and find the Skaterift tab, and in that menu, the Export tab

Export Dir must be set to the game folder, which ends in /steamapps/common/skaterift/
NOTE: the path must have a / at the end, else things will break.

Wer're now setup to go, but an optional step here is to create one from scratch. If you want to do this, take a look at the detailed board specification for how to set it up. If its your first one, you probably want to skip this step.

3. Edit the texture

Next step is to customize the artwork, in the template folder there is a texture which you can edit. There is also the original .xcf file which you can open using GNU Gimp, or a similar image editor.
Now you can change the texture on the material to your own file, and see how it looks in Blender.

4. Compile the model

In the Outliner panel in the top right, rename the collection name, called boards/template/board.mdl. You should replace only the word template. The collection name is the path it will export the model, relative to the directory we set earlier.

Now in the Skaterift Export tab, press Compile This collection. NOTE: Blender will freeze for a second or so, since the export script has to compress the texture file.

5. Test it out in-game

If everything is good, you should be able to visit the board shop and it will be loaded in there. If not, try reopen it. If still not not, then something broke, and there is no contingency plan here, sorry.

6. Upload via the Workshop tool

From the menu of Skaterift, you can open the workshop tool. From here, fill in the folder name which houses the board. This is relative to the game folder just like the export tool. You will know its correct when you see your board after pressing the load button.

You can customize the preview by dragging around the image, left, right and middle mouse buttons do different controls. From here, just fill in the information like the title and description, and press submit.