Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Modding Tutorials => Topic started by: NeonShivan on February 15, 2013, 08:20:39 am
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Hello HLP. I'm currently wondering whether or not a tutorial for creating briefing icons and/or shield icons exists and if so, where can I find it. Thanks!
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For general ANI information (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=74636.0). For shield icon you might need to know the order of the quadrants methinks, so I suggest reverse engineering one of he existing shield icons.
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The biggest hangup for you is going to be getting the pallet right... I tried creating this (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=74758.0) to help out since it can do the pallet automatically, but I'm not yet convinced it works on anyone's machine but mine. One of these days I'll convert it to some other language that's more transferable.
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Just use photoshop and paste it over something indexed to the correct pallet for that.
Has about slightly >50% chance it works on the first try like a charm, never worry about it again. (and slightly <50% chance it inverts the pallet, in which case you're fuuuuucked).
GL;HF.
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Just use photoshop and paste it over something indexed to the correct pallet for that.
Has about slightly >50% chance it works on the first try like a charm, never worry about it again. (and slightly <50% chance it inverts the pallet, in which case you're fuuuuucked).
GL;HF.
Yeah... I really hate when Photoshop inverts the pallet... :(
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I use PhotoImpact. To make a shield ANI I find an existing one with quadrants that more or less fit the ship I'm working on, extract the ANI to a folder as pcx files using ANIVIEW32, take a picture of the ship from above using PCS2 or the F3 ship lab, paste it into PhotoImpact, grayscale it, increase contrast/brighten, shrink to size, copy the shrunken image directly over the first frame of the existing shield ANI, save, and then recompile with ANIBUILDER32. Works every time, and should also work in Photoshop.
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Palette management is one of the few areas in which Paint Shop Pro stands as significantly better than PhotoShop, mostly I think because it keeps it really simple.
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What about for Gimp, same story?
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GIMP is reliable, but you need to understand its logic first. To import a palette, open the file from which you convert the palette, open the file you want to import it to, and go to Image -> Mode -> Indexed. Do remember to uncheck "Delete unused colors from the palette," because you need all 16 colors of the palette for the game engine to display your brief icon/shield/HUD ani. If you reconvert to RGB (because most GIMP tools require RGB to function properly), you need to do the palette import all over again.
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GIMP is reliable, but you need to understand its logic first. To import a palette, open the file from which you convert the palette, open the file you want to import it to, and go to Image -> Mode -> Indexed. Do remember to uncheck "Delete unused colors from the palette," because you need all 16 colors of the palette for the game engine to display your brief icon/shield/HUD ani.
Do note that GIMP also lets you save palettes; you only need to do this once per type of ANI (head/shield/HUD etc.), then you can directly select the right palette from the drop-down list in the Image->Mode dialog.