CTP1 TGAS Completed!!!- but i need some help posting them

Chris B · April 4, 2001, 21:31

Hi people- I've done the hard part- gotten all the CTP1 tgas by capturing from the AVI videos, but I can't seem to complete the neccesary thing on apolyton to post them- the faster help comes, the faster everyone can come get 'em!!!!

-CB

Immortal Wombat · April 5, 2001, 06:05

Dont bother

Omni doesn't mind if you just write a description in the email, and send it straight to him. (with a 200*150 pic included)

Martin Gühmann · April 7, 2001, 08:03

Captures from the *.avi files? It is more dificuilt towork with avi captures, because there aren't on an oure black background. You think they are. But they aren't. It is easier to separate the pictures from an pure black background as from something that looks alike. There is a second advantage of the pure black images: The zip Compression rate is higher, you can make the zip file smaller.Therefore the pack has only a size of 370 kb Therefore I created my own screencaptures from the Great Library. The names of the 73 images follows the CTP1 uniticon.txt. I also added some blancs for the tree areas: Land, Sea and Air.

Unfortunatly Omnigod is in this moment "outta there" It will take a while til he add this to the Apolyton database. Therefore I gave Galdan of http://www.ctp2.de.vu access on it. (It is a german site. But you should able to download the stuff from there witout speaking any german.)
The unit images can be found at: http://www.solarisproject.de/cgi-bin/down/down.pl

Look for Advanced Image Mod für Einheiten

There are also the building images Advanced Image Mod für Gebäude

And the tech images are also there: Advanced Image Mod für Technologien

By the way the advance image pack contains already some unit tgas, because Activision used some CTP1 unit images for advances.

[This message has been edited by Martin Gühmann (edited April 07, 2001).]

Chris B · April 7, 2001, 10:21

DARN. I knew somebody would have already done it!!!! I snet mine to omnigod too. Are you sure about avi captures? They look black, and its my best impression that that's how Wes and Hexagonian made theirs, as they arent the originals and resemble the videos.

Martin Gühmann · April 8, 2001, 00:44

Hi Chris,

I create an pure black alpha mask of the Captured tgas or try to replace the black color with another color. I had problems to change the black color of the captured avis. Therefore I didn't used them. And I found also some CU0XX.rim files without an video. I was able to get these images into the Great Library by changing the uniticon.txt.

By the way if avi captured are good I would already use them and made some images by using the avi files.

-Martin

WesW · April 9, 2001, 00:51

Martin, is there any way for you to take the beige background from Ctp2 and merge the Ctp1 images into it? Harlan and some others have tried "painting" the beige into the black areas of the Ctp1 pics, but it just doesn't look good to me. What needs to be done is to replace the old background as a layer with the new background.

Immortal Wombat · April 9, 2001, 06:02

I captured a few *.tgas for Hexagonia for the cradle of civ mod, and I did this from the *.avi files.

The background of the *.avis is pure black, but where the blackness meets the unit, there is a few pixels of "dark".
I have managed to make a blank unit background by pasting selections of beige over an existing unit background, but then any transparent paste from an avi capture comes out blurry because of the dark pixels.

Wes, it could be done, but it will need a lot of hard work, painting each dark pixel to either black, or the colour of the unit.

WesW · April 9, 2001, 22:43

Martin, the last part of your post would seem to imply that the image will not be sharp where the unit image borders the background. This is what is wrong with the ones Harlan made.

Martin Gühmann · April 10, 2001, 00:36

I made the screen captures of the CTP1 Great Library itsself. The .rim#s are on a real pur black background. Check them out here is the link again that leads you to the top download page of:
http://www.solarisproject.de/cgi-bin/down/down.pl

the ID numbers are 76, 77 and 78.

I made already an image pack for CityMod2. It is working without modifying any textfile.

Now how I made this pack: I used Paint Shop Pro 4.15(, because it was cheap). Than I took CTP1 Great Library screenshots. Afterwards I made for the screenshot a mask of pure black alpha. Everyone who created a unit or city sprite know how to make the alpha channel working.
For those who don't know here is a quote from HOW TO MAKE CTP UNIT GRAPHICS.rtf:

quote:

4. Then to make the Alpha channel, from the top menu, click on "Masks", "New", "From Image". It may tell you that there is alreday an alpha image and ask if you want to replace it. Click on yes. That will bring up another window. On this one select "Any non-zero value" and click "OK".

This alpha mask make your work much easier.

Now you can edit the mask therefore go to the top menu, click on "Masks", "Edit Mask". Now you see the mask: Everything that is black is also black in the original image. Everything that is white is not black in the original image.

How to separate the images from the Great Library:

That can be also done with the alpha mask: Make of the screenshot of the CTP1 Great Library an alpha mask. Edit the mask. Now make everything within the image black. Now click with the magic wand on the black image rectangle. Finish editing the mask and the image is selected. Now you can copy it to a new image. Now you have to look up the name for this picture in the according CTP1 *icon.txt or/and compare it to the *.avi files in order to give it the correct name. And final save it as *.tga file. Make shure there are no masks in the *.tga files and it has the correct size. It should have a size of 160x120 pixels or approximate 38.418 bytes. That are two bytes more then the original *.rim files.

I done this work already for techs, buildings and units. >It can be downloaded from:
http://www.solarisproject.de/cgi-bin/down/down.pl

Part2: How to make good CTP2 images:

I already described using alpha maskes. Now make an alpha mask of a CTP1 image. Edit every part of the mask that should be appear black on the CTP2 background. The black should be changed to white. Then use the magic wand to select every white part of the mask. Finish editing the mask and copy the selected part of the image to the CTP2 background. Put it on the background.

Now you have to make the shadow:

Therefore go to the top menu, click on Image, Effects, Drop Shadow.
That will bring up a window with some options for the shadows. Color is black, opacity is 197 and blur is 9. Vertical offset is 3 and horizontal is -9. You should play with these variables not for every picture are these the correct ones.

But that is not the last part to make good images:

Now you have to blur the edges of the coppied area, therefore use the retouch tool, blur mode, the smallest size and go over every edge pixel with the tool.

-Martin

Martin Gühmann · April 10, 2001, 03:26

The unsharp borders of Harlans ones are OK, but the shadows are missing. Take a screenshot of the CTP2 Great Library and you will see that the borders of the units, techs, buildings et cetera are unsharp, too. I mean only the border pixels are unsharp. And the border has a size of one pixel. The borders of the CTP1 screenshots I made are also unsharp. You will realise black borders.

-Martin

hexagonian · April 10, 2001, 11:41

I've updated the tgas for my Mod, attempting to match the background of existing tgas - the complete set is at my site
http://www.mydocsonline.com

login is hexagonia
password is hextapul

I've also included in another folder on my site a zip file with a basic TGA background for a land unit, and a sample of the Spearman unit with the new background and drop shadow in place. The tga for the Great Library looks very good, and background color matches the color of the other entries. However, the tgas for the army managers and the units within the game look lighter than the existing ones - but all I did was shrink them down from the larger TGA size. Nevertheless, they are more consistent with the overall package.

I used Photoshop to alter them from the existing files.

If anyone has the screen capture from the Ancient City Improvements and a sea and air unit, it would be much appreciated.

Martin Gühmann · April 10, 2001, 14:05

Hexagonian, I tried to take a look on your sample spearman image, but I can't. I tried to open the images in Paint Shop Pro but it says something like: Inavalid tga format. Are you shure you deleted any mask? I tried to take a look on the image with the Great Library but CTP2 crached. I know the correct size of the images:
Every images should have a size of approximate 38.418 bytes, but your unit image has a size of 54.272 bytes and the land.tga has a size of 71.808 bytes.

-Martin

hexagonian · April 10, 2001, 14:45

I just pulled up the images from my database - I have them all on my work computer.

The images were created in Photoshop - I do not know if they can be read in PaintShopPro. I do know that Photoshop is very flexible in cross platorm artwork, but I do not know if PaintShopPro has that flexability, having never worked with it.

The images are all RGB, Targa (tga), 16 bit, all flattened - (I just rechecked the files), and the tgas have the following size (in pixels)
UPUP158L.tga - 160 x 120 pixels - Great Library image
UPUP158A.tga - 32 x 24 pixels - Purchase image
UPUP158B.tga - 24 x 18 pixels - Army image

The file 'land.tga' is the background that I used. It is set at the largest size (160 x 120 pixels). When creating the tgas, I work in the largest size and reduce the file for each of the different tgas, since they are all proportional to one another.

Since most of the fan created tgas had black backgrounds, I used a magic wand tool to select the black background, inverted the selection and then cut and pasted the image over the background - I also soften black edges with a blur tool. Photoshop also has a feather tool allowing to create soft edged shadows in a separate layer - then all I do is flatten the image.

I also had created all of the files last Friday and had replaced the old ones with the new ones. I did run some playtesting this week with no problem, but I will recheck this Spearman file if I get a chance tonight.

I do not know what your setup is like, but the tgas have to be able to link up with an entry in the uniticon.txt file, so check and make sure that a unit in that file has the numbers

UPUP158L.tga
UPUP158A.tga
UPUP158B.tga

for it's entries in that file

Paul · April 10, 2001, 16:19

I can't open them in PSP either. If they are proper tga files they should also work with PSP. All the tga pictures from the Med Mod can be viewed with PSP, so most likely there's something wrong with those pics.

hexagonian · April 10, 2001, 22:47

Well, I checked the files in my setup - no problem there. They are loaded and appear in the Great Library and in the tab bars.

This one has got me stumped. It may be an incompatibility issue between Photoshop and PSP, since I created the images in Photoshop - that is my only guess at this point in time.

What has really got me confused is if players are having problems loading the images within their files and accessing them in the Great Library. At least players could be able to see the images there.

WesW · April 11, 2001, 04:10

I had the same problem Paul did. The files would not work in either PSP or the game. The size of them can't be right, either. I think that some special program you have is allowing you to view the pics, Hex, or else you are not using the exact same pics in your game as are on your site.

hexagonian · April 11, 2001, 08:56

When I created the images last week, I burned a CD and downloaded them from that CD at home. Hence the files were working on my system.

The zipped file was corrupted in some way, because when I downloaded the images this morning, I couldn't open them either. I had zipped them from my Mac computer with a program called Zipit. Zipit is supposed to be compatible with Winzip (I use it all the time to unzip Winzip files), but somehow the file format got changed.

I have rezipped the files off of a PC with Winzip, uploaded them, redownloaded them and unzipped them now without any problem, so they should (knock on my wooden head) work.

Please notify me if they don't.

Martin Gühmann · April 11, 2001, 13:57

Hexagonian: Now I was able to take a look into your images. Two notes: The original shadows of CTP2 units is darker but the image itsself looks good. The land.tga is a 24 bit *.tga. not a 16 bit *.tga. Therefore the file has a size of 57.644 bytes.

-Martin

hexagonian · April 11, 2001, 15:58

I had to guessimate on the shadows.

The background was saved as a 24bit file, as this is what Photoshop defaults to. I would cut and paste the background into each tga file that I would work on, then after I was done flattening it, I would save the tga as a 16bit file.

But I am glad somebody was able to open the files...

WesW · April 12, 2001, 01:01

The pics look great, Hex. If you, or someone else who understands your method, would like to volunteer to convert the current Medpack beta tgas to the Ctp2 background, it would be a big help to me. I have a list of the pic numbers which still need to be converted.
Btw, from what I can tell, the Ctp2 small pics use a different shade of background than the large pic. For the Medpack, this will not be a problem; the volunteer would simply need to shrink the large pic to the smaller sizes.