[Si|eNt(\/)inion]

how do i make briefing icons and such? i dont know if i have the right programs or anything, but it kinda sucks when you have a new mod and say its like a corvette and it looks like a deimos when you put it up....what do i do to make it look like the ship it actually is?

[Galemp]

mmmph... too tired to post full instructions... use aniview and anibuilder with screenshots from modelview.

zzzzzz.......

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Ask whoever made the SI Arachnas, 'cos they released an icon to go with it, along with ones for the Acheron adn GVI Cairo.

[Galemp]

Okay, I'm awake now.

Here's what you do. All the icons for Freespace are two ANIs- one for hilighting it, one for fading it in or out. Find the two anis (using VPview) for the same ship that are about the right size for what you want. Open them in ANIview and see how it works. Extract all the frames as bitmaps.
Using your screenshots of the ship in modelview, convert them to the palette of the ani frame you're using, and make sure the brightness balance is right. Save them as PCXs. Now you have all the frames you need for your anis.
Using ANIbuilder, make your two anis to the same specifications as the original ani you used. Make sure they work OK. Then, move the anis to the right data directory and edit the icons.tbl to include your ani. Open FRED and see if your icon shows up where it's supposed to.

I think that's about it, except that you need to make sure you have the right palette in the icon, or else it will screw up the colors in-game. I figured all this out on my own, by making the Karnak icon in the Port. Hope it helps. :wink:

[CP5670]

Ask whoever made the SI Arachnas, 'cos they released an icon to go with it, along with ones for the Acheron adn GVI Cairo.

I made the icons for those. (although I didn't make any of the models) GE pretty much covered it all; the only thing I would like to add is a word about the colors. In order for the icon to display properly in the briefings, you have to use a special color set for your pcx files that is a 256-color palette with only the first 16 colors used, and the rest all set to green. You can get this palette by simply taking one of the original icons, extracting a frame from it (any frame) and getting the palette out of that.

Also, you need a four-frame fade animation for each icon, which is basically used when "fading out" an icon from a briefing screen when the next stage is selected. This can be made with the same procedure GE listed, except that each frame of the icon is darker than the previous one until they fade out to black. Check out some of the original icons for examples.

[Red5]

MAKING ICONS IS BAD...VERY BAD.....TRY NOT TO MAKE ICONS FOR AS LONG AS YOU CAN....