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#51
I tried the Paintshop Pro steps someone posted earlier, and I couldn't get it to work. Could someone who has figured it out in Paintshop Pro please post detailed, clear, and coherent steps as to how? I'll edit it into the original post (and give credit, if you care).
I got a free trial version of Photoshop and have made several badges, i have no hosting so I can't upload them. I'll just tell you.
So far I've made 2 Radiation Warning Symbols, one red one yellow. That spiffy new USAF Symbol the wing lookin thing. The US Aircraft insignia that we all know and love. And Two UN Symbols. One of the entire flag, and one of just the symbol with Blue Insides.
EDIT: I have decided to make one of a Soviet Star, a decorative styled one with the Hammer and Sycle inside it.
Contact me if you wanna host them for me. MegaGoni@msn.com.
The Radiation Symbols are my personal Markings and will not be hosted.
Photo SHop 7 Works great:
I'm gonna make insignias of many more of the worlds nations. I'll pack it in a zip when I'm done and called it, "RadHaz's World Nations Badge pack."
Doing this in PSP 7.02 is a cinch. Just make your image and select the part of it you want to be transparent using the magic wand. Then use Selections > Modify > Expand a couple of pixels to make sure you get all of the empty space, then hit Selections > Invert.
You should now have selected everything solid (i.e. non-transparent) that you want to include. Click Selections > Save to Alpha Channel. Resize the image to 64 by 64 pixels. Then save the image as a 24-bit, uncompressed TGA.
From the PSP 7 help on adding an alpha channel:
Use the Save to Alpha dialog box to save a selection to an alpha channel. To open the dialog box, choose Selections > Save To Alpha Channel. This command is available only when the image contains a selection.
Using the Save to Alpha Dialog Box
1 When the dialog box opens, the filename of the image appears in the Available Documents box, and the selection is displayed in the Preview box.
2 In the Available Alpha list, double-click New Channel, or highlight New Channel and click OK. The New Channel dialog box opens.
3 Type a name for the new selection.
4 Click OK. Paint Shop Pro saves the selection to the alpha channel and closes both dialog boxes.
Anyway, I'm off now to make sure that this actually worked.
[edit] Yep, it works beautifully, transparency and all. Enjoy. [/edit]
Last edited by malignus; 8th Sep 03 at 1:25 AM.
A few samples:
One of my friend just made this of the danish flag
hope you like it.
This logo lark is great.
House Kurita (Battletech and my tatoo as well)
A Pirate logo, futuristic. This I used for my ol' merc company Damage Inc. Its actually the insignia of a pirate cruiser Chirs Foss did for a Dune movie, that was never made.
Waco Rangers from Battletech
And of course we can't not have a Royal Navy Ensign can we!
Damn local rif raf attacked me as the fleet was posing, most unsporting of them!
Malignus - thanks for the PSP 7 tip. Finally it's working! Do you know how to get the logo itself to 50% transparency though? Mine looks a bit stupid as it appears to be floating above the ship, because there's no transparency to it.
Has anyone tried this with printshop 12?
If so how does it work?
Thank you for any help you can provide.......
well i realy suck at photo shop
ive made sever attempts to make badges but havnt been able to
so im lookin to see if i can get somebody to help me out
i would like an iron cross as on the German tanks in WWII
this this one:
thnx
[edit] i supose if im asking for a file i should say where to send it
post it here or send it to joecanada01@hotmail.com
thnx agian
My U.K. Symbol is the RAF's symbol.
I have a more artsy looking Iron Cross.
I made an Australian Flag one. Not Good Enough, I've given up on finding the Airforce symbol, you know, the RAF circle with the Kangaroo in it(Same with the Kiwi Target of the New Zealanders, just can't find it.)
GOnna use the Australian(And NZ too) Naval Ensign instead.
Instead of a Red Star for the Chinese or their Flag, I'll rip off the Navy Idea one more time with their Navy Ensign as well. I ufortunately cannot host this, so When I'm done with these three, I'll pack it up as version one and will await anyone who will like doing me a good old fashion favor and help me out.
EDIT: I'll do 2 chinese ones.
EDIT2: Sweden too, cuz they're cool, but if somebody could find me their Airforce symbol, that would be great. Thanks.
EDIT3: If Nobody minds, I'm making a U.K. Naval Ensign to accompany my RAF one. You choose how the Peoples of the U.K. are represented.
Hi folks
my way of doing an alpha -mask may not be the best one, but its working (for me at least) and seems not too much work ...
first I make the picture fit the size, adjust sharpness, glitches, some "bad parts" due to resizing.
Second i paint the things i want to see through black ( rgb 0 : 0 : 0 ).
Third I select "layers->new mask layer->from picture" (then there is usually some message about converting into a normal layer, say ok here) then i select "everything apart from zero".
Fourth I select "layers->mask save/load->save mask in alpha channel".
Fifth select "save as" and give it the desired filename and select ".tga" and press ok.
maybe this helps someone
Greets
BS
p.s. as i sidenote, i make every badge upside down, too because my psp8 and my HW2-Demo have some misunderstandings between "up" and "down" ...
Last edited by BulletSix; 9th Sep 03 at 12:21 AM.
Ok, here's my take on how to do it in Paint Shop Pro 8.
1. Create your picture in the correct size and stuff.
2. Select everything that you want to be solid. Here's some tricks you can use:
* If you have selected everything that you want to be transparent, do "invert selection".
* It can be non-trivial to paint 2 objects and select them both. (At least it can be non-trivial if you want to do it perfectly.) Here's how to do it:
a) Paint one object. Either it's allready selected now, or PSP still sees it as an object. If it's an object, do "Selections - From Vector Object". You should have the object selected now.
b) Save the selection to the alpha channel. (You can also save it to disk, but I like the alpha channel.)
c) Create your second object, and use the same steps to save the selection to the alpha channel.
d) Repeat as needed for any other objects you want.
e) Now you need the combine the selections. To do this, go to "Selections - Load From Alpha Channel". In the dialog box, select a selection other than the one you currently have in your picture, and make sure "add to selection" is selected, and not "replace selection" (!).
Repeat as needed for any extra selections you saved. When done, save the complete selection to the alpha channel.
f) Now you have to delete all the selections you saved to the alpha channel, except for the last one. There's a menu option for this somewhere, called "delete from alpha channel", probably under the "Image" menu.
(I don't have PSP8 installed here, so I can't check.) (You really need to do this, because only the first alpha channel is used in the game to check transparency.)
g) You should have an image now, with all the solid parts in a single selection which you saved in the alpha channel.
3. Save the image.
4 Play !
Any questions, feel free to ask.
About partial transparency: allthough I haven't found a way to set this, I find that certain features of the ships do show through my badges anyway. This is most obvious on the badge on the carrier ship. It's also the most ugly there, but that's not the point :-P.
Edit: like the previous poster mentioned, it is needed to make your images inverted before you save them. Also, when you invert the image, the alpha channel doesn't get inverted with it.
So you have to design your images inverted right away, otherwise the transparency will be all screwy.
So the order becomes this:
- Create object
- Invert object
- Convert object to selection
- Save selection to alpha channel
- Repeat
#65
who needs intel when you can have boobies
- Ragnarok
edit: changed .gif for .jpg
Last edited by Kroggy; 9th Sep 03 at 1:36 PM.
(@Murph) later dolts
is this file sent to all the clients???
heres mine lol
could be the thing that pulls in the undecided
#68
info bulletin: the outermost pixel in the 64X64 image is not visible in game, makeing th effective badge 62X62, not always a big deal, but you can see how the points of the ears and teeth on Sabre PSA's first badge dont appear, or how the left and rith of Orrilion's flag is also clipped,
just so you guys know and are able to see youur badges in full glory. /info bulletin
- Ragnarok
here´s mine :howdy:
ugly carrier
ugly ressource
ugly mother
As you may or may not know, Devil's Due Publishing is putting out the new G.I. Joe comics. And in commemoration of said universe, I know exactly what color scheme I'll be using in H2: black or very dark blue w/dark red accents, with the Cobra logo.
Here is my tutorial on making a badge using the GIMP. I've completed several badges and I think no one else has tried to post an actual sequence for the GIMP yet, so here goes.
A) Get the GIMP, obviously, you'll also need GTK, download and install.
B) Find some image you want to use, in my case I used logos I could find from old/defunct sports franchises.
C) Now preferably you have an image with a white or otherwise constant background, I'll assume you want to take that out, and leave yourself with just the central image to work with.
D) Drop the image into the GIMP, you'll see the GIMP menu with the headings File, Xtns, Help and so on. The image will be in a seperate window, first thing to do is to right click on the image, scroll down to select, and chose the by color... option. This will open another window which will probably have a completely black image displayed. Move the cursor over the white (or the background, whatever color it is) to select that color. This will highlight only that portion of the image that has the color you clicked upon. If this is the color you want to delete, continue on. If not try again until you've selected what you want to erase.
E) Now, close the select by color window and return to the image, right click on the image and scroll down to the Layers menu, chose the add alpha channel option, this will prime your selected background colors for removal.
F) Once you've added the alpha channel, right click on the image again and scroll down to edit-clear. This should have the effect of deleting the background color, allowing you to see the checkerboard (transparent) background behind your image. Now select the "select rectangular regions" tool from the GIMP menu and click on your image, this will take the selection off.
G) In my case I had some trouble getting my images to face the right direction when applied as a badge, to fix this its necessary to rotate and flip the image. To rotate your image, right click on the image and scroll down to the Image menu, then to Transforms, then to Rotate, and finally select 180 to flip the image on its head. Now to flip on the horizontal plain, (usually necessary to avoid a "mirror" image) right click on your image scroll down to Tools, Transform Tools and flip, this will change your cursor to a horizontal line with two arrows at either end, left click anywhere on your image and move the mouse to the right, this will flip the image horizontally for you.
H) Now since HW2 chokes on indexed color images, (and yours might be one), right click on the image and scroll down to the image menu, scroll to the mode option and you'll see several options RGB, Grayscale and Indexed, you want your image to be RGB, so if the option is available select it, if it is not, go to the View menu and select Image Info, if it reports your image is an RGB image of at least 24 bits, your fine. This is important to remember your image needs to be 24/32 bits and RGB for it to work as a badge.
I) Now that the image is ready, we can shrink it down, apply some blurring (if you wish) and apply some transparency.
J) To shrink the image right click and bring up the menu, scroll down to the Image menu and select the Scale image option. In the upper part of the menu you will see several text boxes, below the first set labeled New Width and Height are two other boxes called Ratio X, and Y. To the right of those boxes is a small chain link, click this link and see that the chain is broken, this will allow you to select any size and not have the CPU keep the aspect ratio the same. Now in the New Width and Height boxes type in 64 for both. Once your done close the window to the Scale menu.
K) Now it helped me to blur my image some before shrinking it, when you do the bluring does not matter much but bluring will help make sure your badge doesn't have sharp jagged edges. To blur what I did was I right clicked on the image, scrolled down to the Filters menu, selected the blur menu and selected the Selective Gaussian Blur option. I usually leave the settings alone and apply the blur, this component is optional.
L) Once your image is down to badge size, it helps to add some transparency so the image wont completely cover up the markings on the Mothership or ship its applied to, this adds to realism. First right click, and scroll to the Layers menu, select Layers, Channels and Paths option. This will open a new window, all you really need to do here is click the Keep Trans. Box first, then you'll notice the Opacity slider, edit this slider to the desired level, I usually set it to 80. Once your done close the Layers Channels and Paths menu.
M) Now its time to save, right click your image and scroll to file, save as. With the menu open select the path you want your file to be saved in, also be sure to chose the TGA extension in the Save Options area, where it says Determine File Type, this will change your image name to image.tga, you're nearly done, when you hit save, the program will give you an option to Export your image, if you do NOT get this option, your image is probably not in RGB format, and you need to try again. The box will say something about needing to merge visible layers, go ahead and export, then another menu will come up with two radio boxes and two options labeled RLE Compression and Origin at Bottom Left, I usually unclick both and hit ok.
Now you have a badge ready to go, probably not the most simple thing in the world but it works. The two most important things that will agrivate you in this process that you should avoid is 1) remember to make your image an RGB image, indexed color wont work, and 2) be sure to unclick the chain relating to ratio size when resizing your image, you don't want to end up with a 69x64 or 64x67 image that looks right but wont work. Anyway I do hope this helps anyone needing to create a badge in the GIMP, good luck.
hey guys, i got an image, and i cant get layers to work.. every layer option is greyed out. also, i cant get the background to become transparant.
some help would be welcome
#74
haha excellent !!Originally posted by Ragnarok
who needs intel when you can have boobies
Karan Inside
- Ragnarok
I have got to try this... PS4 ah! ... maybe time for a DL.
edit oh no I got it working nice instructions there SF worked for my v old copy of PS thx
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/boolybooly/collbb.JPG
Last edited by boolybooly; 13th Sep 03 at 11:49 PM.
#75
EVEN EASIER!
Check it out! A free badge tool!
Wolf on Air sent in a note to RN saying that the descent III badge format was identical to the HW2 one. The tool can make animated badges, but what you want to do is just make one frame.
The upper left box on the editor window is the paint layer, the second box is the alpha layer, and the final box shows the composite image. Note, this tool supports varying transparencies, and you can import other people's badges to work on!
thx, Uber and Wolf!Originally posted by ÜberJumper
EVEN EASIER!
Check it out! A free badge tool!
Wolf on Air sent in a note to RN saying that the descent III badge format was identical to the HW2 one. The tool can make animated badges, but what you want to do is just make one frame.
The upper left box on the editor window is the paint layer, the second box is the alpha layer, and the final box shows the composite image. Note, this tool supports varying transparencies, and you can import other people's badges to work on!
#77
Haha, great choice!
Have you got the badge available for download anywhere?
Im trying to use that stupid Descent III badge maker utility but it keeps telling me that my 64x64 pixel picture is not 64x64.
#79
Works fine for me, just made one now. Make sure you save the frame, not the entire file. Saving the frame will save it as a TGA, saving the file will put it in the descent 3 format.
A good starting point, if you've got photoshop elements, is to paste in the image you want there, resized to 64x64, then open it into the descent program, and draw in the alpha channel. Works well.
#80
Its that honky tOnk woman...
lets just say the badge of rockness is at hand
TGA Stonzerz logo
fixored
PS edit I have another Judge Dredd one but I have put it in the decal dump which is where I will add my contribution from now on.
Last edited by boolybooly; 14th Sep 03 at 9:53 AM.
Does the Descent III editor take care of the problem where, in the GIMP a badge must be rotated 180 degrees and flipped left to right if it is to appear correctly in the game. That is would I need to bother with that if I use the editor?
all you need is to convert it to 64x64 targa file no messing with conversion.
Well thats good, although I can do the whole process in the GIMP quickly enough cutting down on complexity is never a bad thing, thanks.
#86
Wolf:
The DIII editor outputs the files correctly.
Done in PSP 7. I took my source image, added alpha channel and player name.
Originally posted by Wolf359
Here is my tutorial on making a badge using the GIMP. I've completed several badges and I think no one else has tried to post an actual sequence for the GIMP yet, so here goes.
A) Get the GIMP, obviously, you'll also need GTK, download and install.
B) Find some image you want to use, in my case I used logos I could find from old/defunct sports franchises.
C) Now preferably you have an image with a white or otherwise constant background, I'll assume you want to take that out, and leave yourself with just the central image to work with.
D) Drop the image into the GIMP, you'll see the GIMP menu with the headings File, Xtns, Help and so on. The image will be in a seperate window, first thing to do is to right click on the image, scroll down to select, and chose the by color... option. This will open another window which will probably have a completely black image displayed. Move the cursor over the white (or the background, whatever color it is) to select that color. This will highlight only that portion of the image that has the color you clicked upon. If this is the color you want to delete, continue on. If not try again until you've selected what you want to erase.
E) Now, close the select by color window and return to the image, right click on the image and scroll down to the Layers menu, chose the add alpha channel option, this will prime your selected background colors for removal.
F) Once you've added the alpha channel, right click on the image again and scroll down to edit-clear. This should have the effect of deleting the background color, allowing you to see the checkerboard (transparent) background behind your image. Now select the "select rectangular regions" tool from the GIMP menu and click on your image, this will take the selection off.
G) In my case I had some trouble getting my images to face the right direction when applied as a badge, to fix this its necessary to rotate and flip the image. To rotate your image, right click on the image and scroll down to the Image menu, then to Transforms, then to Rotate, and finally select 180 to flip the image on its head. Now to flip on the horizontal plain, (usually necessary to avoid a "mirror" image) right click on your image scroll down to Tools, Transform Tools and flip, this will change your cursor to a horizontal line with two arrows at either end, left click anywhere on your image and move the mouse to the right, this will flip the image horizontally for you.
H) Now since HW2 chokes on indexed color images, (and yours might be one), right click on the image and scroll down to the image menu, scroll to the mode option and you'll see several options RGB, Grayscale and Indexed, you want your image to be RGB, so if the option is available select it, if it is not, go to the View menu and select Image Info, if it reports your image is an RGB image of at least 24 bits, your fine. This is important to remember your image needs to be 24/32 bits and RGB for it to work as a badge.
I) Now that the image is ready, we can shrink it down, apply some blurring (if you wish) and apply some transparency.
J) To shrink the image right click and bring up the menu, scroll down to the Image menu and select the Scale image option. In the upper part of the menu you will see several text boxes, below the first set labeled New Width and Height are two other boxes called Ratio X, and Y. To the right of those boxes is a small chain link, click this link and see that the chain is broken, this will allow you to select any size and not have the CPU keep the aspect ratio the same. Now in the New Width and Height boxes type in 64 for both. Once your done close the window to the Scale menu.
K) Now it helped me to blur my image some before shrinking it, when you do the bluring does not matter much but bluring will help make sure your badge doesn't have sharp jagged edges. To blur what I did was I right clicked on the image, scrolled down to the Filters menu, selected the blur menu and selected the Selective Gaussian Blur option. I usually leave the settings alone and apply the blur, this component is optional.
L) Once your image is down to badge size, it helps to add some transparency so the image wont completely cover up the markings on the Mothership or ship its applied to, this adds to realism. First right click, and scroll to the Layers menu, select Layers, Channels and Paths option. This will open a new window, all you really need to do here is click the Keep Trans. Box first, then you'll notice the Opacity slider, edit this slider to the desired level, I usually set it to 80. Once your done close the Layers Channels and Paths menu.
M) Now its time to save, right click your image and scroll to file, save as. With the menu open select the path you want your file to be saved in, also be sure to chose the TGA extension in the Save Options area, where it says Determine File Type, this will change your image name to image.tga, you're nearly done, when you hit save, the program will give you an option to Export your image, if you do NOT get this option, your image is probably not in RGB format, and you need to try again. The box will say something about needing to merge visible layers, go ahead and export, then another menu will come up with two radio boxes and two options labeled RLE Compression and Origin at Bottom Left, I usually unclick both and hit ok.
Now you have a badge ready to go, probably not the most simple thing in the world but it works. The two most important things that will agrivate you in this process that you should avoid is 1) remember to make your image an RGB image, indexed color wont work, and 2) be sure to unclick the chain relating to ratio size when resizing your image, you don't want to end up with a 69x64 or 64x67 image that looks right but wont work. Anyway I do hope this helps anyone needing to create a badge in the GIMP, good luck.don't know how much simpler/complex that tutorial is. *shrug* better we get at posting this stuff the more efficient the tutorials will become.Originally posted on Sierra forums by Forinec1
This is for those of you who have Gimp, a free downloadable image-editing program.
Now, to start things off, click on 'New' and make sure it's set to RGB color, and fill-type should be set to background. Another thing very important is the size of it. If you want a large space to work with, make sure the size is 256x256 px or equivalent, so that you can scale it down to precisely 64x64 px when you're finished. If you make it with a size of, say, 300x250, it won't be scaled the way it needs to be.
Next, you ... err... make your badge. If you want to import an image, just open it with Gimp and copy/paste it to where ever you want it.
Now, here's the tricky part. Right-click on the image, go down to Layers, and then click on Layers, Channels, and Paths. In that menu, add a new transparent layer, which should appear above the first layer with the badge, signifying that it's behind it. Then go to the Channels tab and click Add. In the menu that appears, click on the color tab and change it to white if it's not already that.
When you've added the channel, it should appear beneath the Red, Green, and Blue channels. Go back to the Layers tab and select the Badge layer. (The first layer you started off with.) Right-click on the image, scroll down to Image, then go to Alpha. Click 'Add Alpha Channel.' If it is grayed out, then you shouldn't need to do this.
If that worked right, you should be able to use the Contiguous Region Selector tool or similar to select the parts that you want invisible or transparent, like the background. After you've selected them, you right-click, go to Edit, and click Cut. Now you should be able to see the transparent layer, which is usually represented by a gray background. Don't worry; you won't see that when you're in the game.
This is when you scale it down to 64x64. Right-click on the image and go to Image. Then click Scale Image. In the top two fields, enter 64 in each of them. Check to see if they are set to pixels, and not something like inches.
When you're ready to save, right-click on the image again, go to File, then Save As. Click on the Determine File Type tab and choose .tga. It may ask you if you want to export it first, so click Export.
Now you should have a folder called something like .xvpics and the actual file in the place you specified. Ignore that folder and move the .tga file to where ever you installed the HW2 demo/Bin/Profiles/Badges.
If everything went well, you should now have a new badge when you start the HW2 demo.
I am not to be held responsible for anything that goes wrong when you try this. If you followed this tutorial correctly, everything should work.
Well hey now we have two versions of a GIMP Tutorial, what could be wrong there? Heh, shows the benefits of actually knowing how to teach, as opposed to simply knowing how to do, hmm?
However, it seems that only Photoshop 7 does the alpha automatically, and 5 does not. (6 might, who knows.)
GIMP tutorial extremely wordy. It's easier than it looks.
Badges made with The GIMP: http://home.comcast.net/~arneeast2/hw2/badges.html
#92
Using the PS7 tut my images come out with white backgrounds. Whats up?
I opened a JPG.
I erase the parts I want to be transparent (checkers).
I save the image (32/Non Comp/64x) as .tga
Place in correct folder...and it appears as white background in game.
#93
trinity, im not sure about PS, but in GIMP,you have to save the alpha layer, if not it'll not be saved as visible, make sure you save the alpha layer, if you already did.... i have no idea.
Does PSP or GIMP support partial transparencies? If so, how?
- nickersonm
#95
Where's the help file? How do you work with the transparency? The icons don't have tool tips and there's no explanation on what the buttons do.
Here's some similar freeware:
http://www.thirdwishsoftware.com/freeware.html
Since the Descent III badge thing soesn't have simple copy and paste ability, the combination works ok if you don't want to create your alpha layer by hand.
[edit]TranGen converts any 24-bit ".tga" file into a 32-bit ".tga" file by creating the transparency layer out of pixels with an RGB color-value of 255, 255, 255. If you need white in your badge and you don't want it to be transparent, change the color to off-white (i.e. 254, 255, 255).
-Mikail
Last edited by Mikali; 24th Nov 03 at 5:02 PM.
#96
nickersonm: You can add semi-transparency by using shades of gray to fill the alpha (white bieng fully opauqe, the lighter the gray, the be more opaque it will and then gradually turns more transparent the darker it gets, until its black - fully transparent).
works fine with adobe photoshop and psp 7
just save your image as *.tga
and it works in H2
-e- nvm, figured it out
umm those links dont work, earthlink shutsdown the site until next month, please use geocities. it says Sorry...Page Temporarily UnavailableOriginally posted by JamesX
This is redundently complicated. I just tried it. Photoshop automatically sets the alpha layer for you. My Logo (Thunder Cats) worked perfectly. There is no need to add another alpha layer, just make sure you set it as 32 bit, and don't compress RLE.
here is the example, in brower they might not show up well, but it shows up in the Profile selection perfectly
Hiigaran (Thunder Cats)
Vaygr (Chinese Dragon)
The Web page or file that you requested is temporarily unavailable. It has been so popular this month that it exceeded its free monthly traffic allotment. Access to this Web site will be restored on the first of next month. Please come back then.
Thank you for your visit!
#100
Don't feel bad Trinity, i'm having the same problem you are and stiill can't figure it out.
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