Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: 0rph3u5 on April 20, 2006, 09:09:45 am

Title: Creating comm anis
Post by: 0rph3u5 on April 20, 2006, 09:09:45 am

I'm currently tryin' to create some new comm anis (those it the upper left corner when a message is send) for a campaign...
I've converted the needed pictures to 256 greys (8 bits per pixel) and the needed size... that I used "Descent Manager ANIBUILDER32 Version 1.0 Beta 02 (Build 05)" to create the ani-file and in aniview32 everything looks good and seems to be fine...
BUT ingame the new anis where displayed as if the source pictures had been converted to black and white...
I don't know how to proceed now...
Do I need a different programm or something? Did I convert them to the wrong color palette?

hoping for quick replies
0rph3u5

*I'm using SCP

Title: Re: Creating comm anis
Post by: StratComm on April 20, 2006, 04:52:55 pm

Ugh.  I have never liked making ANIs.

My suspician is that the pallate is incorrect, but I really can't be more specific than that.  Try extracting one of the frames of an existing comm ani and seeing what colors it uses.

Title: Re: Creating comm anis
Post by: Flipside on April 20, 2006, 05:05:13 pm

Were you getting any error reports from Anibuilder when you tried to compile the video?

Title: Re: Creating comm anis
Post by: SadisticSid on April 20, 2006, 06:32:59 pm

You're certain each frame uses the exact same palette?

Title: Re: Creating comm anis
Post by: Flipside on April 20, 2006, 08:38:36 pm

What it sounds like, to me, is exactly that. Some programs when converting files to black and white will use a standard template, however, photoshop, for example, will convert colours directly to the pallette, so despite the fact that such and such a shade of gray is colour 23 on one frame, it might be colour 47 on the next one.  ANIBuilder gets confused when this happens and Fubars the ANI.

Title: Re: Creating comm anis
Post by: 0rph3u5 on April 21, 2006, 02:21:45 am

Quote from: StratComm on April 20, 2006, 04:52:55 pm

My suspician is that the pallate is incorrect, but I really can't be more specific than that.  Try extracting one of the frames of an existing comm ani and seeing what colors it uses.

checked that... my programm says: 256 colors(greys in this case) 8 bit per pixel - same thing what I gave my anis

Quote from: Flipside on April 20, 2006, 05:05:13 pm

Were you getting any error reports from Anibuilder when you tried to compile the video?

no... but when I try to get the frames down to 16 greys (4 bits per pixel) refuses to create the ani... saying something that there need to be 5 bits per pixel (but I found no palette with that)

Quote from: SadisticSid on April 20, 2006, 06:32:59 pm

You're certain each frame uses the exact same palette?

I think so - I used the same programm everytime... I did all changes to the images before convering them into .pcx file (nearly) simultaniously

Title: Re: Creating comm anis
Post by: Col. Fishguts on April 21, 2006, 02:45:20 am

Which program are you using ?

Try it with IrfanView, it has an option to do a batch conversion and use the same colour palette for all images.

Title: Re: Creating comm anis
Post by: 0rph3u5 on April 21, 2006, 07:12:02 am

I used ACD Photo Editor 3.1...

but I'll try it with IrfranView (have to get it...)

Title: Re: Creating comm anis
Post by: karajorma on April 23, 2006, 03:25:43 am

I highly recommend using Bright to do the conversions. It does a much better job that either Photoshop or Irfanview. It's a command line program and it's available from the tool section of my FAQ.