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dunno what went wrong but this did not weigh any bones to the skin at all when I tried it.  Followed it exactly.  Dunno why but obviously weighing is the part I am trying to avoid with this so what gives?

Not really.  I am sure the original CSP's from Nintendo were rendered out as well.  Its really just a trade off of time for quality.  Not really too complicated to set up either once you get it down. After spending what probably amounts to days, weeks or even months porting or creating a custom character or vertex.  A few extra minutes for a high quality CSP doesn't really seem all that bad.  Especially for somebody who demands quality.  Like a professional artist or a perfectionist.

it's actually not so hard.  It's called professionalism.  Some people care, some don't.  This is simply for those that do.

*note* I may add more images to this tutorial later, to make it more clear, but right now I have to go to work.*note*

This is not a tutorial for making poses.  There is already a great tutorial for that.  This is simply the best possible method to achieve the highest quality image once you have the pose you want.

With this method I have developed and perfected you will be able to achieve the highest level of professionalism and quality for your csp's available.  This is for those of you who demand nothing less that perfection.  I have noticed that most if not all of the methods here are using screen captured images from brawlbox.  This approach is more professional than that, and is what you would do to achieve the highest quality image possible.  For some this may seem overkill, but for others this will be just the trick.

For this tutorial you will need a version of Photoshop that is capable of manipulating 3D objects.  From memory, I want to say CS4 was the first to add this feature but I could be wrong.  I personally I have written this tutorial for CS6 Extended but it should be very similar and easy to follow in older versions of Photoshop.  

Unfortunately, though, this will not work in gimp or anything else since we are going to be using Photoshop's 3D capabilities to render high resolution 3d objects.  The benefit of this method is that you can achieve super high resolution images which can then be scaled down (by rendering a lower resolution image or taking snapshots in brawlbox you always end up with jaggies and blockies.)

Let me give you an example. (Keep in mind that the high res images I will show you were originally with a transparent background but for some reason imgur removed the transparency when I uploaded them, This is obviously a very important factor for high quality csp so don't worry, the transparent background will be there in the end.)

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Now let me show you the final product

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Please note I will not be taking baby steps and this tutorial assumes a basic knowledge of the programs involved.  There are other tutorials which can help you if you need more experience with BB or PS but we really won't be doing anything super complex and even a careful noob shouldn't have a problem.

Your gonna need Brawlbox.
A good pose for your characters [you can make one or use one from an attack animation]
3D capable version of photoshop
Patience

Firstly, create a new folder somewhere (I use my desktop) which you can keep all your files for this project. Now you need to load up your character in brawlbox.  And then load up the animation for the pose you will be using.  Once you have your character posing and looking nice in brawlbox you will need to apply the pose to the actual model itself.  To do this,  in the "Transform All" menu in the Animation panel at the bottom of the screen hit copy.  And then go to frame 0 of the animation which should then move your character back into his T pose.  Hit paste under the "Transform All" menu and viola.  The pose should now be applied to the model itself.  

Almost done with Brawlbox.  Now you just need to export the model as dae (which will require one of the newer versions of brawlbox).  If asked about normals just hit yes.  Lastly you will want to go to the texture data folder for your character, right click and export all into the same folder as the dae you just created.  Now close brawlbox, and you probably don't want to save either since you just ruined your characters T-pose.

Now you should be able to open the dae in Photoshop.  This is at least true for CS6 Extended.  If older versions cannot open DAE files you may need to find a way of converting the file into a supporting format but I am not sure.  To open it in photoshop you can just drag in into the window after you open PS or you can go to 3D>New Layer from 3D file.

If all went well you should see your character posing in photoshop.  Select the marquee tool to simplify the view port.  The lighting will be too dark and if you have any transparent textures your character will probably have white in places he shouldn't.  Don't worry, we can fix this easily in a moment.

Firstly in the 3d panel you should deselect any objects that you don't want in your csp.  For example link has a sword handle and shield on his back that I didn't want so I simply click the eyeball next to that object so it disappears.  Do this now or you may forget.  

Now we want to fix the lighting so that we can see our model better when working to fix up the textures.  To do this, in the 3d panel go all the way to the bottom and select the light. Should be called "infinite light 1". Now just click the trashcan to delete this light.  This is because these lights have a way of making our image look horrible (especially the caracters faces) so instead we will be using image based lighting to give and even color appearance.

To do this go all the way back to the top in the 3d panel and go into the environment rollout.  In the properties panel you should see that IBL is already checked.  The only reason it looks so dark is because the color is set to black.  Double click the black box to the right of where it says "color:" and set the color to pure white by dragging to the top left corner or inputting ffffff in the color # box.

Now your character should have perfect lighting but just to save us some render time make sure the shadow box is unchecked and just below make sure shadow opacity is set to 0%.

We are now done with the lighting for our characters and will move on to textures but before we forget go quickly into the scene rollout just underneath the environment where you just were.  Go all the way to the bottom and put a check next to where it says "remove hidden backfaces" or it may just say backfaces, same thing.  This will save us a lot of time during the render.

Now it is time for the final portion, getting the textures to look right.  This is actually not hard at all but this is where you will need some basic reasoning skills.  The textures are probably not correct however each character is a little different so I can't point out every problem.  I will point out all the ones I have come across so far and how to fix them.  The first thing is that eyes are probably messed up on your character.  This is because PS is only loading one texture for the eyes and most Brawl characters use several texture layers for the eyes.  For example link had 3.  The whites of his eyes the eyeball itself and then a highlight for the eye over that.  To fix this is simple simply combine all 3 in one image in photoshop and save that image as .png.

Now in the 3d panel find the eye object.  This may be easy or hard depending on if the creator of your model named the objects or just left the names generic.  Either way you can find them pretty easily by checking and unchecking objects to find what is what.  Also keep it mind most characters have 4 eyes not two.  2 for yellow eyes and two for regular.  To simplify things make sure you make the yellow eyes invisible by unchecking the eyeball next to their object.  Now find the regular eyes and just replace their texture with the new one you just made. Just click the little grey box next to where it says "diffuse" and choose replace texture.  Do this for both eyes and viola.

This little trick should solve most of your problems.  For example ganondorf had a gold highlight on his entire armor and simply replacing that texture with his normal armor fixed the issue.  Again this is not difficult but just requires some basic reasoning.  The only thing left will probably be transparent textures (although some characters don't have them.)

To illustrate what I mean by transparency issues just take a look at this

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To fix this is really easy.  To tell photoshop that your layer is transparent you just need to load an opacity layer.  So once again find the object in question in the 3d panel and select it.  In its property panel scroll down to where it says opacity again click the little grey box and load texture.  Just load the same texture that the object uses as its diffuse texture.  This will tell photoshop that transparency in the texture bitmap should be transparent on the character himself.  

Just repeat these steps as needed until your character is looking perfect.  Now we are ready to render but before we do we are gonna want a higher resolution image so that we can avoid jagged edges as mentioned before.  So since this is a 3d object it can be upscaled without any of quality.  Go to image>size and choose percent.  Do 500% percent and apply it.  Now you have a much larger image that when downscaled shouldn't have any blockies or jaggies.

The final step is rendering the actual image.  But there are some things we can to do to make it faster.  Depending on your PC this could take some time, mine took about 40 minutes.  We need to render the image in order to apply anti-aliasing and removed the white boarder around transparent objects, as well as to fix other issues with the image.  So if you really want the highest professional quality image you shouldn't skip this step.  However there is a way to lower the rendering time by selecting only the areas of the object you want to render.  To do this go into the layers panel and hold control and click the image that represents the layer.  Now the whole character should be selected.  However many times you will actually not have the whole character in your csp so you don't really need to render the whole character.  Take a quick moment and find a safe area to remove from your selection.  You should have an idea of where your csp is going to end or if your in doubt copy and paste the whole image into a new image and create your csp to see where the cutoff will be then go back into your image and remove the unused area at the bottom from your selection. This should help reduce rendering time dramatically otherwise photoshop will try to render the whole image, even the transparent parts.  

Now everything is in place and we just need to be patient and render.  Make sure that your computer is not going to go into sleep or hibernation in your power settings.  This can completely ruin the render so just double check the settings before you start the render.

Now the moment of truth  hold alt+shift+ctrl+r or go to 3d>render on the top menu bar or choose render in the properties panel.  Photoshop should automatically have optimal settings for the render and will begin the render right away.  Now just be patient, if you have a badass computer it won't take so long.  My cpu is a quad 1.6 ghz and it took about 40 minutes.  I am sure a lot of you have better computers than that.

..............................Now......................................We.......................................Wait...................................


When it is finished rendering. Rasterize the image. Go to layer>rasterize>3D.  Make sure the area you rendered is still selected and invert the selection.  Now press the delete key.  Now only the rendered part of your image remains.  Now invert the selection again.  Go to image crop.  Make sure you SAVE the image.  And now your done.  Go ahead and make your CSP now and enjoy it, in all its perfection and beauty.

Yeah this didn't work at all just made my character grey and messed up his texture. perhaps I should try a different version of BB?  I used .68