The "...normal.texture"

[The_Smiling_Knight]

The textures for the skins have both a full color texture and then one with "...normal.texture" also. If I modify an existing skin, do I have to change the one with "normal" in it as well?

[Musashi]

Leave the normal texture alone. I think it's a lightmap. Open it up and you'll see what I mean.

[Casuir]

Normal maps are an advanced form of bumpmapping:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping
Basically it makes the model look more detailed without using more polygons. If you're drastically rechanging the texture you might want to change them as leaving it the way it is could make your texture look strange, if you're just doing a recolouring they should be ok.

The alpha channel in the normals handles specular lighting (gloss maps in rtw i think) you might want to alter these if you're changing parts of the texture which would reflect light.

[Musashi]

All the textures for a given model share the same normal map, the way CA set it up... So I just stick with theirs ;)

[Dave1984]

I haven't found a need as yet to edit these files..should I ever need to,EG for a TC I'll let you know how they may be manipulated...

[Casuir]

All the textures for a given model share the same normal map, the way CA set it up... So I just stick with theirs ;)

The textures are all pretty much the same so theres no need to use different ones. It is possible to specify a different one in the modeldb, so its set up that way for convenience rather than necessity. There are some units which have their own normal map, religious fanatics for example. A 1024*1024 dxt5 takes up 4mb of texture memory i think so having as many as possible use the same one makes very good sense.

Theres three ways I know of to make them, one is to make a high poly model and using a program or plugin to generate the map along with a lower poly model, the second is using heightmaps which I know nothing about and the third is to use the nvidia plugin for photoshop which generates one from the texture, the results with this can be mixed. CA seem to have used a similar method, heres an example from the loading screens:
https://img169.imageshack.us/img169/7831/normalmaphb3.jpg (https://imageshack.us)
The one on the right looks pretty good but the checkerboard pattern on the guy on the lefts tunic has a raised look which doesnt look right. Bit of touching up after you apply the filter might be neccessary.

Btw if anyones taking requests for reskins a moorish version of the rocket elephants would be nice :)