Making Team Colors, Molemans Way, A Simple Tutorial, (warning picture heavy)

[Moleman]

Making Team Colors, Molemans Way, A Simple Tutorial


Alright guys i know that there's not very many tutorials for adding team colors to ships so Ive gotten rather fed up. The only one i could find talked about using an expensive program called Photo shop, so it was immediately no use to me. I decided to do some playing around with current HW2 textures and see what i could do and to see if i could make any textures with team colors. After many try's I have finally found a way and here is a little tutorial on my findings.

Things you'll need:
Gimp - The latest version can be found here GIMP HOMEPAGE (http://www.gimp.org/)
Gimp DDS Plug-in - Can be found here GIMP DDS PLUG-IN (http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/~cocidius/dds/) (Download the one that says windows 32 binarys, and be sure to read how to install the plugin)
A Texture of any size so long as its a powers of 2, as in 2, 4, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, etc.
Steps:
First open up gimp and ensure that the dds plug-in is successfully installed.

Step 1:
Now open up your texture, for this tutorial i will be using a part i clipped off of a Hiigaran carrier.
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r68/Jello_fun/step1-1.jpg
Save it immediately by going to File>Save As. Create a new folder for the textures so they don't get lost and at the top type name_diff.dds , where as name is the name of your texture. Hit save and a small window will come up, set compression to BC2/DXT3 and check the box labeled generate mipmaps. Then Click OK.
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r68/Jello_fun/step1B.jpg

Step2:
Next we need to make a Glow map to do this go to the colors drop-down menu and from there go to colorize, a window will come up that will say hue, saturation, and lightness. Set the levels to what is shown in the image below.(lightness may differ depending on the amount of white in your texture, the brighter the color the darker, i have some white in mine so I'll set it to -25)
HUE:235
Saturation:100
Lightness(yourchoice)
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r68/Jello_fun/step2A.jpg

NOTE: to make lights and windows stand out simply paint bright green over where they are supposed to be before saving.

Save it immediately by going to File>Save As. Create a new folder for the textures so they don't get lost and at the top type name_glow.dds , where as name is the name of your texture. Hit save and a small window will come up, set compression to BC2/DXT3 and check the box labeled generate mipmaps. Then Click OK.
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r68/Jello_fun/step1B.jpg

STEP 3:

Alright now that we have got the saving done we can now move onto the actual team colors. Alright open up your texture we labeled diffuse, a little window will pop up that ask to load two things, un-check the box labeled load mipmaps. After that is well and done go to the daialogs tab in the menu bar and click on channels it will bring up a new window labeled red, green, blue, and alpha, un-highlight all of them except for the one labeled alpha so that it looks like the image below.
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r68/Jello_fun/step3A.jpg

Now take your eraser tool and have at the texture anywhere you would like to have the MAIN BODY color. The parts you erase will show a checker look that's normal, and don't worry your texture that you erased will still show up on the actual ship. Here's my example below.
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r68/Jello_fun/step3B.jpg

Once again Save it immediately by going to File>Save As. Create a new folder for the textures so they don't get lost and at the top type name_diff.dds , where as name is the name of your texture. Hit save and a small window will come up, set compression to BC2/DXT3 and check the box labeled generate mipmaps. Then Click OK.
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r68/Jello_fun/step1B.jpg

Do the same to your glow map. The glow map contains the data for the team stripe, so where you erase on the glow map you will get your SECONDARY TEAM COLOR.

Here's my end result.
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r68/Jello_fun/endresult.jpg

Now simply apply it to your ship in CFHODED (there's plenty of tutorials floating around on these forums that i don't need to walk you through that.)

And you should end up with this.
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r68/Jello_fun/ss00014-2.jpg

My Primary/Main color was bright purple
My Secondary/Stripe Color was bright green

I chose those colors so that it would stand out well i hope this helped you in making team colors.

-Moleman2009

[CloudAge]

This is quite useful info!

[SRI-Sajuuk]

Very Nice! I Say we Sticky this!

[McGlaspie]

Nice Tutorial Moleman, thanks!


I second the sticky!

[Joe 2987]

The only problem I could see was this:
A Texture of any size so long as its a multiple of 4(correct me if im wrong)
It's not multiples of 4, it's powers of 2, as in 2, 4, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, etc.

Other than that it's fine. I vote for a sticky.

Bookmarked, by the way.

[Moleman]

its been edited and corrected...*looks around* stick votes? yay!!! well i just thought people could use a propper team color tutorail something that was clean and simple

[Ultraxwing]

I vote on Sticky cuase this helps for me to understand on how to do this, now how to make badges appear.

[Moleman]

im currently working on a badge tutorial but right now im trying to juggle a whole bunch of stuff

[Ultraxwing]

hey, i have a tutuorial idea, i get stumped on one thing in all of my modding, and i fail at it all of the time have you heard of DockPaths, if someone could make a tuturiol on that subject than my mods can be produces 50% faster lol well maybe not. but still i get stumped on that alot.

[Joe 2987]

@Mole: Thank you for your time in making this, and thank you in advance for your time in making the badge tutorial.

@ Ultra: Here's one:
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=195862

[Moleman]

oh its np, teh badge tutorial wont be out for a bit becasue im still trying to figure that out but once i do then ill put something up.

[Joe 2987]

Mole: I just found this out: GIMP cannot compress DDS images that are not multiples of 4. You were right - in a way. It has to be multiples of 4 AND powers of 2 - GIMP chokes on non-multiples-of-4 and HW2 chokes on non-powers-of-2... If you want to get rid of the multiples of 4 requirement, use Photoshop or something.

[Ultraxwing]

i use paint.net every one, its free and works just like photshop, and if you can find the .dds plugin for pain.net it workds just fine.

[Ultraxwing]

now i really understand this tuturiol... paint.net sucks when it comes to team colours just comes out in black, but with this, my ships now will feel "different"

[roflaherty]

I have a problem, the textures go transparent? can someone tell me whats wrong!? :help:

[MatthCoFreak]

There is nothing wrong, because the Alpha channel usually stands for transparency. However HW2 shaders will interpret Alpha channel as team colors so whatever your image editing program may show you, you will have your team colors ingame :)

[roflaherty]

No, ingame where it should be team colors it is transparent, alowing me to see through the ship?

[MatthCoFreak]

It shouldn't. Make sure you correctly imported the ship.st shader in your .hod.

[roflaherty]

whats ship.st shader?

[MatthCoFreak]

It's in the /shaders folder of the Homeworld2.big.

[roflaherty]

Thank you! (another one down)
You guys are saviors

[NumberZero]

"Step2:
Next we need to make a Glow map to do this go to the colors drop-down menu and from there go to colorize, a window will come up that will say hue, saturation, and lightness. Set the levels to what is shown in the image below.(lightness may differ depending on the amount of white in your texture, the brighter the color the darker, i have some white in mine so I'll set it to -25)
HUE:235
Saturation:100
Lightness(yourchoice)"

I'm using Paint.net, and my hue doesn't go as high as 235, is it a required setting?

[Moleman]

no tis not required but just something in the general area