Creating a Warframe Skin

Skinning is the name of the game! TennoGen allows artists to submit new textures for base Warframes, allowing them to reimagine them across different Factions and aesthetics. While Warframe skins do not allow you to edit the mesh of the body, they can be paired with either a reskinned default helmet, or a new helmet mesh altogether.

If you’re making a custom helmet, please refer to our Warframe Helmet guide here.

Like all content in TennoGen, your Warframe skin must be grounded in a Faction to ensure it is visually cohesive with the rest of the game. For more information on the eligible Factions, please refer to our Faction Style Guide.

Technical Guidelines:

• Maps Authored at 2048 x 2048.
  • In-game Resolution: 2048 x 2048
  • 1024 x 1024 for tintmask and emissive.
• Requires a full set of textures as per our texturing guide here.
  • Non-Metals at roughly 50% luminance, or 128 on a 255 point scale.
  • Metals at roughly 80% luminance, or 186 on a 255 point scale.
• If you want to add a special scrolling texture to your emissives, you need to provide us with the file!
• If you are providing a custom helmet mesh, additional guidelines can be found here.

Artistically:

• On helmets, pay special attention to the front and make sure to avoid placing details in the exact places where you expect to see an eye, nose, mouth, etc. While some of the in-game designs vaguely hint at facial features, the goal is to heavily abstract the “face”.
• Ensure your skin includes design elements from its chosen Faction!
• Do not use gold as the metal color (unless allowed in the Faction guidelines).
• Keep the construction of this piece in mind — how would it have been made? How do the various elements work together?
  • Simple panels and “toothpaste-y” swirls do not meet the detail level you’d see in-game.
  • Complex layers of materials are necessary to make this item fit in-universe.
  • Avoid bodysuits where all the details feel drawn onto a single layer.
  • Here’s an example of this complexity, when applied to Tenno metal details. https://imgur.com/BlBV8hc
• Match tint order with existing cosmetics for that Warframe to encourage mixing and matching pieces.
• Avoid pop culture, copyrighted, or otherwise out-of-universe references, as outlined in our Common Reasons for Rejection.

Checklist:

Prior to submission, please refer to the handy checklist below to make sure your Warframe Skin meets all the TennoGen criteria: