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Tutorial: Making sail emblems & flags
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Wolfwood
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 3:56 am    Post subject: Tutorial: Making sail emblems & flags Reply with quote

Attention: The latest version of this tutorial is now accessible at the Cutlass Isle "Guide" section. Please, read that and use this thread if you have any questions or suggestions to make the guide a bit better.

Attention 2: The very latest version now in .pdf format http://www.uta.fi/~kamale/funstuff/pirates/CutlassIsleTutorial.pdf

If you want to find out how the tutorial came into existence, you are welcome to read through the first posts in this thread as well! Smile

--

Here's a short tutorial for the making of sail emblems. Using alpha channels is relatively new to me also, so if someone can add some more professional info, I'll implement it here to make this THE tutorial for this purpose.

First, you'll need an image editor. I use Paint Shop Pro, but Photoshop and Gimp should work just as well. All you need to be able to do with it is to save in .bmp format. Second, you'll need a program called DXTbmp (link provided in the Pirates! readme file).

1. You need to pick an image that you want to use as an emblem. Simple images are of course the best, and I'd prefer not to have photographs (as they will stand out from the other game graphics). Here, I've picked a picture of a howling wolf:



2. In case your image has some background, you'll need to erase it. In this case, the wolf head is already on a white background.

3. The image has to be either 128x128 pixels in size, or some other multiplier of number 2, like 256x256 pixels. The larger it is, the less you will see pixelation in the final emblem in the game.

4. Save the image in .bmp format.

5. Now, we need a second image to be used as the alpha channel. We'll use the original image here, so we need to make a copy of it (don't save over the original file).

5.1 First, you select the background (most programs come with an option of selecting an area based on its colour, so that's why a single colour background is handy here). With the colour selector of the paint program set on black, you turn the entire background into pure black.

5.2 Now, you INVERT the selection (in PSP you'd select "selections" -> "invert"), which effectively selects everything BUT the background (i.e. the emblem image). Now, with your background colour selector set on white (or some light shade of grey), you delete whis part of the image, leaving only a white space. You should end up with a following kind of an image:



6. Save this image in .bmp format

7. Exit the paint program and start the DXTbmp program.

8. Open the first image (the one we made first) normally by selecting file -> load

9. Then select "Alpha" -> "import". The program asks you to confirm that you really want to load a new alpha picture. Choose "yes" and we'll come to this phase:



10. Save the final emblem by selecting "File" -> "Save as" -> "DDS texture". Select either DXT1 or DXT3 as the "Save type". Try out which one works best for your particular image.

Attn!: You want to save this image into "My Documents" -> "My games" -> "Sid Meier's Pirates!" -> "Custom". Make this directory if it does not already exist. Give the image the appropriate name, starting with "ship_sail_emblem_lrg_XXX", where the XXX is the name that you want to give the emblem. You need to have the start of the name exactly as typed here for the game to recognise it.

Final emblem:



In post 5, below, I'll explain another trick that you can use to avoid the white area around the image (as in the wolfhead above).


Last edited by Wolfwood on Tue Dec 14, 2004 11:35 pm; edited 6 times in total
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Civrules
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 4:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks, this should be helpful to a lot of people.

I'm relatively new to this stuff also, and it just took me a few tries to figure it out.

Nice job explaning, also. Smile
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sky
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 8:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks a lot for this tutorial!
Now I know enough to start designing my own sail emblems even if I will receive my Pirates! not until next week (2nd Dec.). That's great Very Happy ... because at the moment I have enough time for playing around with creating graphics - I guess next week time for such things will be rare Laughing
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SirDrago
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 9:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the tutorial Smile
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Wolfwood
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 5:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tutorial Part II: Tricks with two colour images

Ok, I figured out something in my head last night before I fell asleep to make the white border around the wolfhead go away.

Since the wolfhead is a greyscale image and the purpose of the alpha channel is to let through colour depending on the darkness of the various pixels on the alpha channel, the following trick will produce nice effects:

1. Take a black and white image, like the wolfhead above in the first post. Open it in your pain program.

2. Now, turn the image into its own negative (In PSP, you simply select "Colors" -> "Negative Image"). Note that you may have to make your original image slightly darker to achieve the best result. You'll have something like this:



3. Make another image in plain single colour, like this:



4. Save them both in .bmp format

5. Open DXTbmp program.

6. Load the plain image as the main picture and the negative image as the alpha channel.

7. Save in DXT3 format, giving the appropriate name.

8. The final result could be something like this:



Last edited by Wolfwood on Sat Nov 27, 2004 6:50 pm; edited 3 times in total
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Civrules
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 5:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That looks cool.

However, something I'm probably doing is wrong...

Whenever I try to create an Alpha channel in the DXTBmp program, it does not make the black transparent on the sail... Confused
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Wolfwood
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 6:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@Civrules: A couple of possibilities spring to mind:

1. Are you sure that the black in your alpha channel is true black (i.e. not just very dark grey)? In the paint program you can make sure about this by checking the RGB values (have to be 0, 0, 0).

2. Are you saving the final image in the correct format? Note, that the DXTbmp's default setting is NOT to save the alpha channel (you need to switch to the correct format (DXT1 or DXT3) in the "save as" window).

If neither of these solutions work for you, let me know and I'll try to figure something else out... Confused
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Civrules
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 6:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ah, yes. I did not save to DXT1/DXT3... Now it works fine. Thanks. Smile
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Wolfwood
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 10:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Happy that the problem wasn't more complicated than that, Civrules!

Now, a final word about

The Flags

Unfortunately, unlike with the sails, the flags don't have any background texture, so instead of using the black alpha channel to show this texture, you must have it in the picture of the flag itself.

Since I did not want to work too hard on it, I solved this problem by opening one of the existing flags (Frenchies) in DTXbmp and saved it as .bmp. Then I opened it in Paint Shop Pro and pasted my own image over the original French Lily and changing the general flag colour at the same time. Then I saved this image, opened it in DTXbmp and saved it in DTX format and gave it the appropriate name "flag_xxx.dtx".

Here's the result:

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Wolfwood
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 10:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And here's an extra tip:

How to keep your wife happy about you playing Pirates! all the time:

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sky
Swabbie
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 11:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Laughing
That's funny! A few minutes before I read your posting I actually also created a sail emblem showing my girlfriend, and now I read that I'm not the only one with such ideas Very Happy.
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Seven
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 12:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

hahahahaha, i'm too young to be married and my girlfriend is far, far away! nobody can tell me how long to play! hahahahahahahahaha!

sorry... this is the only game so far that actually had me sitting in the chair infront of the computer until my butt was sore, seriously! i love this game!
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Ieolus
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 2:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I found a bunch of DDS files on the DVD and dropped them in the custom folder under Program Files\Sid Meier's Pirates!, but in the game they show up as solid purple. Is there a reason for that?
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Corsican
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 5:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Awesome posts Wolfwood!! 'Corsican lifts his stein of grog, tilts it back, and after a healthy quaff wipes his moustache on the barmaid's dress'!
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Falconer
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 6:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Haha, that's SO cool having your wife on there. Smile
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