Team-color unit skins

[Civitar]

Hey Nomad - I managed to get teamcolor working with GIMP. While it's late here and I can't remember most of it, it involved inverting colors once you have colored your TC-to-be area to alpha (or something like that). Because the TC is put on white-alpha spaces, while black-alpha spaces just look black. Basically, I think you're looking at TC as exactly backwards. You (just guessing because that's how I thought of it) think that the transparent parts are where TC shows and the black parts are shadows on the TC. But that's not it at all. White places are where TC is applied, and black/trans places are where it is NOT applied. The amount of TC applied depends on the opacity of the white.

Let me know if this helps you, and if it's too garbled let me get through this party and my soccer game* tomorrow (bad planning on my part, I know). Then I'll slow down and try to make sense.

I made the starting 11 - whoooo!

 

[hangman]

I still can't make this happen with GIMP. Unless someone can do a tutorial, I am just going to forget about using team color with the units I create.

If you have a steam account, maybe we could talk that way, and I can walk you through it.

 

[abob101]

Actually I should have updated my comment... it was not just the sref. I've got this working well now using GIMP and I found the way to get best results is actually with a layer mask.

I'll right something up in the next week or two.

 

[bouncymischa]

A tutorial would be appreciated! I use GIMP for my .dds work, and a couple of models I'm working on could use some teamcolor, but I have no idea how to go about it. It's somewhat unfortunate, but my GIMP knowledge is rather lacking in comparison to my knowledge of Photoshop, but I don't think I can get a .dds plugin for the version of Photoshop I have, so I'm kind of stuck. XD

 

[Nomad or What]

Thanks for the support from everyone! I was just frustrated after trying to get team color to work on one of my models. I certainly want to add it for that additional "professional" touch and if it is rather easy to do then it's worth the extra effort. A brief tutorial would be wonderful; I know it is something simple that I am not understanding....

EDIT: Got it now; the problem was that I wasn't creating a layer mask. Thanks to Civitar for patiently walking me through it! Yay! I can finally add team color to my units....

Spoiler :

 

[Nomad or What]

I decided to post a "down and dirty" tutorial for adding team-color using only Paint.NET. I use this software for the bulk of my work because I have no need to buy Photoshop and GIMP takes too much time and is too complicated for my needs with most of my modifications, which consist of simple re-skins and such.

Paint.NET is very basic software, so you may not get the professional results that Nutty can using Photoshop, but I can do a team-color of a file in about 2 minutes using Paint.NET and the results are good enough for me. Unlike GIMP, you don't even need a .dds plug-in to use it. If you are interested, you can get Paint.NET here.

OK, so my brief tutorial. I will be using the Mindflayer unit and changing the orange parts of its outfit to team-color:

Spoiler :

1. Open the .dds file in Paint.NET.

2. Add a new layer (if the Layers palette is not open press F7). A new layer called "Layer 2" will appear above the Background layer.

Spoiler :

3. OK, this is the critical part: In the Layers palette, double-click on Layer 2 to open the Layer Properties dialogue. At the bottom of the dialogue box is an Opacity: textbox and slider, which can adjust from 0 (full transparency) to 255 (full opacity). The default is 255 and we want to set it anywhere from about 40-100, depending on how light (bright) our selection will be. If it is white, 100 is fine; if it is very dark or almost black, set it to 40 (or possibly less depending upon your preference). The orange parts of the Mindflayer unit are varying shades but is relatively bright, so I will set the opacity to 80 for this tutorial.

Spoiler :

4. The Layer 2 settings are now set to the desired opacity, so now click on the Background layer to begin selecting the areas to team-color. The current layer (Background) is now highlighted in blue.

Spoiler :

5. From the Tools palette (Press F5 if it is not visible) there are three Select tools: Rectangle, Lasso, and Ellipse. You can use any combination of these to create your selection; select one then click, hold-down, and drag the cursor to the desired shape. Hold the Ctrl key to add more areas to your selection.

6. Once you have finished with your selection, use Ctrl+X to cut the selection from the Background layer. Now select Layer 2 from the Layers palette and use Ctrl+V to paste it into Layer 2.

Spoiler :

7. Now we need to convert the selection that we pasted into Layer 2 to be Black+White (Grayscale). Use Ctrl+Shift+G to change the selection on Layer 2 to grayscale. Now, save the file to the Paint.net default .pdn file format. You do this in the event that we wish to increase/decrease the opacity if the results in the game are not what you wanted; the .pdn retains layer data but the .dds file will not.

Spoiler :

8. You are done, that was easy! Now save the file as a .dds by using Ctrl+Shift+S, browse to the desired save location, selecting DirectDraw Surface (DDS) (*.dds) from the Save as type: pulldown, entering your desired file name, then clicking Save.

9. You want to save the file as a DXT3 (Explicit Alpha) .dds file, so ensure that it is selected from the Save Configuration dialogue and click OK. It will now notify you that the format does not allow layer data and must flatten the image; that is OK, so select Flatten.

Spoiler :

10. Here are the results of the Mindflayer in the game using a civilization whose team-color is green. You will note that the striping details on the hood aren't very clear because the team-color floods the details somewhat when using a basic method such as this. I might be able to minimize the effect somewhat by increasing the opacity a bit, but for the most part the unit looks fine to me at the scale that it will be in game. A dramatic improvement for only 2 minutes of time!

Spoiler :

NOTES: You may wish to create additional layers if you have desired selections to team-color with dramatically different lightness/brightness. Put the darker parts of your selection on a layer with lower opacity and the lighter parts of your selection on another layer with higher opacity. Follow the rest of the tutorial per usual. Also, if using an SREF (Specular Reflection) file, make sure that the areas that will be using team-color on your DIFF file (Diffuse, i.e., what you just edited) have the corresponding areas on the SREF file as solid black. Otherwise, it will interfere with the transparency of the team-color.

Hope this helps!

 

[sman1975]

Hate to necro an old thread, but I'd like to add one comment about using Gimp attempting Nomad_or_What's technique in the previous post.

At step 7 - after converting the new layer (layer 2) into gray scale. In Gimp, for some reason, this doesn't finish the job. After converting to gray, you'll need to click on "Colors" menu, then select "Brightness-Contrast"

At that point, make sure you're working with layer 2, then slide the "Brightness" bar to about +100. Not always all the way up, depending on the model, but definitely towards the top. May want to also increase "Contrast" to about +75 or more.

At this point you're ready to move on to step 8.

On most of the units I've experimented with, the opacity should be set somewhere about 20-25% in Gimp - YMMV.

It may take some experimentation between setting the Opacity level at the correct amount for the model you're changing, and getting enough Brightness as well. I've often had to cut team colored areas from the SREF file as well - finding the same sized area you want to team color, then simply deleting that same area in the SREF file. A combination of these three steps (opacity, brightness, deleting the area in the SREF file) seems to work best for me with Gimp in getting team color areas where I want them at about the right color/intensity.

Good luck!

EDIT: Have played around a bit more with this process, and wanted to add a bit more information. Concerning the "Brightness-Contrast" settings. I'm finding that for areas you want to convert to team color - if they aren't quite bright to begin with, and have areas of noticeable contrast, setting the slides to 75 for both Brightness and Contrast work well with a 25% Opacity setting.

If the team color area is quite light, and perhaps not much contrast in the original, I've had better luck not changing the Brightness or Contrast at all, and just adjusting the Opacity in the 25% range seems to work better.

I'm starting to think that if the original area has plenty of contrast already, go with adjusting BCO. If there is less contrast, use much lower BC settings (if any) and keep the Opacity near 25 somewhere.

The higher the Opacity setting, the more "faded" the team color will appear.

The process isn't foolproof and often different models need different settings. One thing I've noticed in experimenting with playing with the colors - you need to completely exit the game between .diff updates - as the game seems to cache graphic data. You won't see any changes made if you stay inside the game and simply rebuild/reload the mod.