How to make your own Buttons/Icons

Robo Magic Man

Robo Magic Man

Prince
Joined
Nov 12, 2005
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Location
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
It's pretty quick and easy to make your own icons if you have Gimp and a DDS converter. If not, there's a link to get them in the skinning tutorial.

1. Find the right button atlas in the art/interface/buttons folder, convert it to a bmp or other gimp-compatible file, and open the converted file in gimp.

2.Go to file, open as layer, and choose the picture you want for the icon. Then, right click the new layer thing on the left window, click scale layer, and change the size of the pic. 60x60 pixels usually works fine.

3. Finally, move the newly scaled layer over the icon you want to replace, right click the left hand layer thing again, click merge down, and save the file. If a window pops up asking you to export the file because bmp can't handle transperency, click export. Convert it back to a dds, and you have a new icon.:)
 
I added an icon and everything displays correctly except the small production icon next to the city name, which is a black "!". Does this indicate it's missing either an icon or data to adjust it for that location?
 
Sorry, I don't know, the only icon I've made so far is for the internet, and I haven't gotten far enough to build it in any game yet. But if you post your question somewhere I'm sure you could find out. Let me know how to fix it if you do.
 
@Thalassicus: You have to edit another file, which is used for the pupose of displaying the production in the citybar. I think its called City_Bar_32 (or something like this - don´t have my copy of civ4 here) and can be fpund in the directory ...assets\art\interface\buttons.

Sorry if the name or directory aren´t correct at all, but with this information i´m sure you´ll be able to find the file need.
 
I am having an interesting issue with my promotion buttons/icons. I am able to create them and convert them fine. But in game the buttons/icons look blurry but when I look at them using dds converter, photoshop, etc. they look fine. Any ideas?

Are there any special settings I should consider when converting from my photoshop file or TGA to DDS?
 
The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that you have "Low Resolution Textures" switched on in the graphics settings.
 
Don´t forget, the single icon is only good for publishing online. In a mod, all custom buttons belong into one big atlas file. That`s the way the game uses, the single graphics in the pak files are redundant.
 
I'm using them as individual icons, which is working perfectly. It's only redundant if you do both an atlas and individual files, which is unecessary :)

Turns out the problem was a bug in the loading function for the CIV4ArtDefines_Building file -- it doesn't check the CustomAssets folder, only the standard and Mod folders. So until that's fixed, just need to do all building icons in the mods folder...somewhat more cumbersome to work with though (I avoid putting anything else in the game root subdirectories...).
 
The Great Apple said:
The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that you have "Low Resolution Textures" switched on in the graphics settings.
Click to expand...
TGA, I finally got it straightened out.

Basically for me used Photoshop and the DDS had to make sure that I had the "Explicit Alpha (DXT3)" option selected in the "Save Format" section, the "No MIP maps" option selected in the "MIP map generation" section and the "Blend Amount" set to 0% in the "Fade MIP Maps" section.

You can check out the results in any of the newly updated Great person mods in my sig or to see all of them combined you can see them in the Great Specialists mod.
 
Thalassicus - Thanks! I actually found that out on my own, but I appreciate your confirming it. However, it does look like major items like Shrines get their "off the map" icons from the atlas, don't they? Active units do, too... See, my Shrine dds building icons show up just fine as city production buttons but when one is built, what appears on the map is a magenta circle telling me it happened offscreen.
 
(Any comments to this analysis would be appreciated.)
 
jenks solved the problem of the "offscreen"/"construct"/"Build" problem of custom units/buildings!!!! :D



jenks posted this:

jenks said:
not 100% if this is relevant but we experienced on Roanoke that custom art needs the 'comma' removing from the start of the address written in the <button> tag, to make the hover icon go to the custom art folder ...
not sure if there is ever a hover icon (circular popup that comes when navigating off screen) in game for leaders, but if you put custom graphics in for anything else ...
Click to expand...

here is the link:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4269331#post4269331







so the problem was as simple as removing the comma from the <button>

I tried it out myself...and it works !!! :goodjob:

I only tried a custom unit... but I'll bet it works for buildings too! ;)


The only problem is that the "construct"/"offscreen" image is lower quality than the city button pic:sad:

Im not sure (gotta experiment) :mischief: but it may need the second part of the tagline (the one that refers to the Atlas.dds file) but possibly not the atlas file... but a custom image (smaller in size) ...however I am unsure since I have not tested this out yet.... :crazyeye:

all I know is that removing the comma works!!!


Excelsior!!!! :lol:
 
Actually I pointed out this solution in this thread about a month ago and to be honest I thought this was a largely commonly known solution, as I myself found it out in post #3 of this thread, dated Feb 18 :)
 
Rabbit said:
Actually I pointed out this solution in this thread about a month ago and to be honest I thought this was a largely commonly known solution, as I myself found it out in post #3 of this thread, dated Feb 18 :)
Click to expand...


must have missed it

oh and thanks for posting that info instead of PMing me... real class
 
Officer Reene said:
must have missed it

oh and thanks for posting that info instead of PMing me... real class
Click to expand...
I didn't mean it like that :blush: I was just pointing out another place where this info is available. I apologize if it came off as hostile or condescending.
 
Thalassicus said:
You don't need to use an atlas file, just change the <button> entry to the path of the icon file (drop the other entries and commas).
Click to expand...
If I modify
Code: 
<Button>,Art/interface/LeaderHeads/Btn_LH_Greece_Alexander.dds,Art/Interface/Buttons/Actions_Builds_LeaderHeads_Specialists_Atlas.dds,1,11</Button>
to
Code: 
<Button>Art/interface/LeaderHeads/Btn_LH_Greece_Alexander.dds</Button>

What will be happend?
 
mikezang said:
If I modify
Code: 
<Button>,Art/interface/LeaderHeads/Btn_LH_Greece_Alexander.dds,Art/Interface/Buttons/Actions_Builds_LeaderHeads_Specialists_Atlas.dds,1,11</Button>
to
Code: 
<Button>Art/interface/LeaderHeads/Btn_LH_Greece_Alexander.dds</Button>

What will be happend?
Click to expand...

Short answer: It should work :p

Long Answer: I'm not sure if anyone has quite figured out exactly what the different items between each comma does for sure, but it's known that by removing the first comma and getting rid of the second file, you're FORCING the game to look at your dds file for the button. Previously, I think it would use three different textures, but if you just list one, it uses that one for all three.

Since last time I knew you couldn't modify the atlas files (and get them to work in a mod folder) it was pointless to try to use those files.
 
Is there a template of a blank interface button? I was looking at WR's buttons and i wasn't sure if they were derived from a file in the civ4 artwork (if so i can't find it) or just copied from another button then roughly edited.

If there is a template, it'd be great if we could have it in the downloads section?

I don't know much about graphics work now but attached is a rough version, i'm not happy with the rounded interior square though, still maybe i'm just being silly. If there's a way to get the civ4 buttons exactly right, i'd prefer it? Are mipmaps necessary? (I'm not quite sure what they are).

Remove .txt to view attachment.
 

Attachments

  • button_template.dds.txt
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