How to retexture a helmet?
nargil66 is probably more knowledgable that I am, but here's the beginner's primer.
First, decide what you want to change the color of. Like the mi_n_goldenskeleton.dbr in items/equipmenthelm directory of the database.
Open the file and click on the ActorVariables tab. There is an entry for "baseTexture". That's what you need. If it isn't there, you can usually guess as the devs had an okay organizational structure. Or you can look at the texture listed in the mesh file using tamschi's MeshView.
You then need to access the .tex file. They can be found by extracting the files from the game's install directory resources/items.arc (or XPack or XPack2) archive using arc explorer tool. I have a bunch of folders in My Documents/My Games/TQ IT directory that just store extracted meshes and textures.
Find the extracted .tex file and open it using TextureViewer (protip, use windows explorer to assign TextureViewer to the .tex file extension so you just have to click the .tex files to open them). Click on file/export and choose a location to save the extracted file. I always use the "targa" extension when I save the export as it can be opened with Paint.net. I don't use Photoshop.
Open the file with whatever image software you use and go nuts. I used to do cgi in college so UV mapping is not intimidating to me, but textures look really weird as they are arranged to map to a mesh not to look good in photoshop.
Then just change the hue or contrast or whatever and save.
Go into your ArtManager and select your mod.
Go to the sources tab and make a directory to store your game's custom textures. Keep it organized FFS.
It can grow pretty big later and it can get hard to find anything then if you don't keep it organized now.
In your new directory right click the right hand pane and in the context menu that pops up select "import".
Navigate to the .tga file you just made and select it.
(protip: when creating the image in paint.net or photoshop, just save it to your mod's source directory directly and skip the import step)
Once it is imported, right-click the file and click the bottom option "Auto Create Asset". Creating assets is really time consuming to do manually, this is a life saver.
EDIT: Forgot to add: When making the auto asset the artmanager prompts you to choose "texture" or "bitmap". Textures are mapped to meshes and bitmaps are for buttons or inventory items. If you make the image for the helmet from the UIBitmaps directory, you would select "bitmap" at this step. Otherwise select "texture".
After selecting "texture", choose "DXT 5 Interpolated Alpha" from the dropdown list near the top of the next pop-up as that is a catch-all type and has always worked for me. (If you want to know which type of DTX compression is used for a specific texture, go back to the original .tex file and open it with TextureViewer and select properties).
Build your mod. Textures take a little more time to build into a mod than database files so don't freak out if it hangs on them a bit.
Once the mod is built, go back to the database file for the helm or whatever.
Click on the ActorVariables/BaseTexture entry and navigate to the mod directory you imported/saved the image into and select it.
Build the mod.
You're done, enjoy the new helmet's color in-game.
I don't touch bump maps, so don't ask.
As far as animations, you have to extract all the meshes and animations to (I think) the My Games/TQIT/Working/Source directory for the Viewer.exe to see them. I forget where they need to be sorry.
One thing all modders do is open up the Viewerr.exe and select a mesh to view. Then just select and animation and hit play. Then select animations for other meshes randomly and enjoy the hilarity. Jackalman with
Limos Icesprite run is pretty hilarious
So I found that the Automaton walk animations actually worked (by trial and error and laughing) for the Skeleton mesh and used those to get the look I wanted in game then added them to the animation slots in a copy of creatures/monters/skeleton/anm/anm_skeleton01.dbr file for single-handed and dual-wield run animation slots.
Pro tip: If a creature doesn't have a CharAnimationTable.tpl based animation file to add to the Animation Sets/charAnimationTable slot in the creature file, create an "anm" directory in their creature directory and copy and paste any of the creature files there.
Open the file and select file/set template and navigate to CharAnimationTable.tpl and hit okay. You now have an animation table that once you build can be added to the Animation Sets/charAnimationTable slot in the creature file.
I like this method better than selecting all the monsters to edit and keeping track later. For example, adding dual wield to a creature that has no dual wield in vanilla. Once I have the animation table, I add it to ALL the creatures in that directory and then if I add an animation later, it is applied to all from the charanimationtable file and I don't have to even open the monster files.