Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Starman01 on September 25, 2004, 05:37:28 pm

Title: Creating Tech- or Briefing Animations
Post by: Starman01 on September 25, 2004, 05:37:28 pm
Hello,

I have tried  creating animations, unfortunately things don't turned out like I want it (not that I'm suprised though).  :(

Has anyone some experience with the ani-builder ?

My problem is the following :

Theoretically FS needs this strange 16 green-colour palette to work in the interface. But when I copy my frames in this sort of palette, there  will be some uge qualitly-loss (I cannot even save the green-grid from the standard-ship-animations, it will be messed up too).

Can the Ani-Files not be builded using normal "indicated" PCX-Files ?
(I'm not sure "indicated" is correct translated, I mean the same palette as the map-files must be saved, in Photoshop-Selection positioned above RGB-Mode).

The question why I ask is this : Every time I try creating an ANI-File with these "indicated" PCX-Files all frames will be messed up, except the last one. See here for reference, the lower picture is the last frame. Has anyone an Idea, how this can be solved ? (Theoretically we could use Pof-Files in the Ship-selection, but I want
to create weapons-ani's also).

(http://www.starman.ag5.de/pics/anim6.jpg)
Title: Creating Tech- or Briefing Animations
Post by: Black Wolf on September 26, 2004, 01:18:54 am
You only need specific palettes for briefing, shield and Ship selection icons. All others get whatever palette you want.
Title: Creating Tech- or Briefing Animations
Post by: DaBrain on September 26, 2004, 02:46:17 am
I hope you did use one (in other words: the same) palette for all frames.


I'll tell you my secret trick: Copy all frames(RGB) into one big image and now create a palette for it. Just use this palette for all frames, and everything should be fine.

Or use Bright.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/TextureSpecifications/bright181.zip
Title: Creating Tech- or Briefing Animations
Post by: Starman01 on September 26, 2004, 03:39:52 am
That is exactly my problem, every frame has the same specifications.

Also the Ani-Converter gives you not much choices. He neither likes RGB-Value nor BMP files, so I can only use PCX, Indicated, 8 bit. Every other palette cannot even be saved as PCX.

Whatever I try, no matter how many frames I use, the result is always the same. All have this static-error, only the last frame is sharp and  shiny

(edit) I tried this bright-program you provided. Even if it is a little  complicated and some additional work, it now converted my ANI-File correkt. I don't understand why, because all my pictures had the same properties in Photoshop.

Never mind, at least now I can finally made new weapon and ship Anis this way until I figure out another way. Thanks for the help, DaBrain. :)
Title: Creating Tech- or Briefing Animations
Post by: Lynx on September 30, 2004, 07:28:23 pm
Or make yourself life easy and tick of the "enable models intead of ani" option in the launcher to have rotating models of the ships like in the techroom. With all effects on it looks better than those pesky animations anyway.:doubt:
Title: Creating Tech- or Briefing Animations
Post by: Galemp on October 02, 2004, 01:05:15 am
the word you're looking for is 'indexed.'

And what I normally do is take half a dozen or so frames, put them in one image, then palettize that with Bright. Then I shrink it and paste my first frame into it, and save it over the original first frame. Then I convert with 'adapt palette to first frame' and it usually works out.
Title: Creating Tech- or Briefing Animations
Post by: Starman01 on October 02, 2004, 03:28:44 am
It works pretty good with the bright-programm:

@Lynx : You are right, but believe me, even if it is much work,
the frames made via render in truespace are worlds better then
the rotating pof (also I can make some tech-background to it, however
guess who should create that background for truespace for me :D )