How do you add or edit skins?

[General Slushy]

My idea is to take the "1960s Adam West" skin and make it black and white, replace the symbol to be the 1943 one, and then replace the cape to be the "2016 BvS" cape.

I have UPK Explorer, TFC Installer, and Photoshop CS6. The closest I've come to doing this so far is having a new suit area that shows the finished product but the game crashes as soon as it is selected *if* the game loads this far at all. I do have other modded suits downloaded from Nexusmods and the game loads smooth with zero lagging.

I don't particularly care if this is a new suit area or simply a texture update. I am aware of the "1943 Propaganda / True Colors" suits located on Nexusmods; however, those suits are not accurate nor well-made.

If anyone can help, please respond; I'm pretty committed to doing what my idea entails, so it won't matter too much if I need to start all over - and I'd probably want to given just how confused I am over modding this game. I will continue to look around, but please send help.

[gps]

Had similar issues with UPK explorer.
Try decompressing the UPK file you want to edit with the decompressor included in this UPK utils set:

https://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/448

If all you are doing is texture editing things should work quite well. But it only works with decompressed files!

[General Slushy]

I'll look into this link soon. I'd ideally like to replace the cape with the BvS cape; I don't think textures only will cover that. Technically, it doesn't need to be the BvS cape, I just want the cape longer than default '60s/'80s cape.

I forgot to mention in the OP that I've tried following this link:

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/UPK_Explorer#Batman:_Arkham_Tutorials

but the later steps over what to rename have only furthered confuse me thanks, probably the most, to the game crashing when I follow what I do understand.

Do you know of any good tutorials for using the xcom UPK utility set?

[gps]

To be honest, I have no experience with changing cape. But I think this might involve mesh editing. I don't say it's impossible, but it is not THAT easy.
So I would recommend you start with texture editing. If you have some routine with that, the next steps will come easier.
If you want to edit the Adam West skin, I would recommend you start with the original skin and do changes there.
What they try to explain in the link, is how to create your own skin, that does not replace an existing skin, but ad a new one. To understand what they explain there, I recommend looking at a Rocksteady original skin, for example Batman Inc. which is store in DLC\356472. Or you can look at how others do it in their mods. At the beginning this looks and feels very complex and confusing, but if you are really commited, you'll get the idea after some experiments.
Basically you can create your own private DLC by creating a new numbered folder. Or you can add your mods to an existing one. For this you need a BmGame.ini that tells the game, which files to look for. You can rename existing ones into your own, but it is not enough to change the file names. The UPKs have have internal names that have to match the external file names. It is very easy to make mistakes here, and then the game crashes.
That's why I recommend to start with an exisiting skin, make then changes there - and when everything works, you can start taking the files and shifting it to another suit slot.

[gps]

Regarding decompress tool - you have to look for a file named decompress.exe and store it under a short (short because you have to type it below ;) ) file path under C:\. Plus you put the files you wish to decompress into the same folder.
And then you have to go to this DOS-style prompt, in German it is called "Eingabeaufforderung", sorry I don't know the translation but if you right-click the Windows-Symbol it is directly above Task-Manager and System-Controll in the menu.
Then you type

CD \
CD \... - the path where you stored decmpress.exe and the UPK files you want

then

DECOMPRESS xxx.upk - whatever file you want to decompress.

That's basically all you need to know.

P.S.: or you can created a file called decompress.bat and put the comandes described above into that file. Then you can reuse it - and no DOS-prompt needed. You can double click the bat-file.

[Loopy]

I thought I'd just add that you can just drag and drop the upk onto the decompress.exe and a folder called "unpacked" will appear with it decompressed inside