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Tom's Unit Factory

tom2050 said:
I'll keep AtomicGamer in mind if it is a good upload site, nothing worse than getting bombarded with popups.

Fileplanet has quite often been saying that those unit files are Adult files and that you are not 18 so can't download them, then they fix it, then it happens again :)

Tom
Click to expand...

You won't have those problems with atomicgamer.
 
hello
I noticed that your Infinitum convertions are missing shadow.
Is there any way to fixi it?

/Orkel
 
Had another go at getting GIMP to do a palette for my conversion, but failed. I still haven't found a way to import a palette so I had a go at manually making a palette for the unit. It took ages but it still just crashes Flicster when I try to load the FXM file. I guess I must have made a mistake when I put the palette together.

The way I did it was to look at the palette from one of your conversions. That gave me all the colours for the last two rows (shadows). And like your unit's palette I made the first four lines black as there is no civ colour. Then to get the unit colours I loaded one of the original gifs, made the background magenta, scaled it down to the same size as my unit frames and then indexed it to 160 colours. Then I manually put all these colours into the palette with the shadows and black for civ colour. I applied this to the pcx file generated by flicster then copied and pasted my storyboard from the bmp file. Everything seemed to work. My carefully constructed palette remained the same. But still flicster crashes. It can open the file but as soon as I look at the preview or try to export it to a flic format flicster exits to desktop.

Have attached a screenshot of my manually constructed palette. Let me know if you can see any obvious problems or if I'm doing something wrong Tom.

Any advice you can give will be greatly appreciated. Hope you had a great Chirstmas and have a happy new year! :)

Cheers

Nick
 
Orkel said:
hello
I noticed that your Infinitum convertions are missing shadow.
Is there any way to fixi it?

/Orkel
Click to expand...

Yes, it is fixable, but in order to add the shadow, you would have to do a conversion directly from the Bioware games themselves, instead of the Infinitum site (Thus re-converting the whole unit). E.G., in the case of NWN, the mdl file would have to be imported into something such as 3ds Max, shadows would have to be added manually, and each frame and direction rendered.

I have done this for the Gorgon, Demon Torment, Basilisk, etc... Takes a bit of time though.

It's not even possible for me to do this solo to add shadows for them all... so I decided not to. Too many units and would take too long (Civ 6 would be out :)).

nick0515 said:
Had another go at getting GIMP to do a palette for my conversion, but failed. I still haven't found a way to import a palette so I had a go at manually making a palette for the unit. It took ages but it still just crashes Flicster when I try to load the FXM file. I guess I must have made a mistake when I put the palette together.

The way I did it was to look at the palette from one of your conversions. That gave me all the colours for the last two rows (shadows). And like your unit's palette I made the first four lines black as there is no civ colour. Then to get the unit colours I loaded one of the original gifs, made the background magenta, scaled it down to the same size as my unit frames and then indexed it to 160 colours. Then I manually put all these colours into the palette with the shadows and black for civ colour. I applied this to the pcx file generated by flicster then copied and pasted my storyboard from the bmp file. Everything seemed to work. My carefully constructed palette remained the same. But still flicster crashes. It can open the file but as soon as I look at the preview or try to export it to a flic format flicster exits to desktop.

Have attached a screenshot of my manually constructed palette. Let me know if you can see any obvious problems or if I'm doing something wrong Tom.

Any advice you can give will be greatly appreciated. Hope you had a great Chirstmas and have a happy new year! :)

Cheers

Nick
Click to expand...

Hmmm... can you upload the FXM and PCX Storyboard file here, or PM them to me. I don't think the Palette would be capable of crashing Flicster, if Flicster was fine before.

You have Build 18 of Flicster? Build 17 had a problem where the animation time was stuck at 0, causing crashes.

I wasn't able to find a plug-in that makes the palette system easier. Anyone know of a freeware program that is pretty robust in it's palette creating/editing abilities? If one can be found, it may be better to use another program solely to make the palettes.

Tom
 
Izual is really great. I too hope that Blizzard will not cause you any problems and that some day you can be fairly confident to make other conversions from their games. I think it would be as tribute to their great games and they should not see it as some form of piracy.
 
hello tom
I am working very hard on how to create shadow in photoshop for these units. I am very close to success!
 
I was successful with the shadow. It was easy, however it took some times becuse all the frames. It didnt take that long thanks to the "Action Record" funktion in photoshop cs4
 
Here is results:

The shadow is faced NE, becuse I use it in RA2, and RA2 use that style of shadow.
This didnt take more than 20 minutes.
 
Tom what version of photoshop are you using? There are easy ways of projecting and distorting a shadow to make it appear accurate.
 
CS1 (v8.0)

There are probably filters for CS, but the only thing I have been able to find to do something of the sort is Transform tool, which lets you scale, rotate, skew, perspective, etc to attempt to get the unit shape into a shadow shape.

Problem was: if a unit is a flying unit, which lands and takes off, etc... shadow is not really do-able with anything CS offers (that I could find). Strictly ground units probably would be okay.

I suppose it could be done using the blending option for a specific layer as well... which I have not tried doing. Using a drop shadow I think might work.

What method of doing so did you have in mind?

Tom
 
The transform tool should work, remember as a unit jumps or fly's it will create a smaller shadow the higher it gets. The easiest way it to copy the layer the image is on fill it with the shadow colr and then transform it. If you canvas is large enough you can use the drop shadow but be careful of the light direction.
BTW the layer blending options work well for increasing contrast.
 
Okay, thanks to the help of you all, Shadows can indeed be made pretty easily and pretty realistically in Photoshop. For units that fly around etc, it should be able to be done, but would take a bit more time to do properly. Land units should be quick and simple.

I will start adding shadows therefore to all new conversions... but will add them to the units already done first.

Here is an example of a windmill that had no shadow, but was Photoshop'd in.

(Graphic from HoMM3)

The shadow moves in a couple frames, but I think I know what caused that.

Tom
 

Attachments

  • WindMill.gif
    WindMill.gif
    24.5 KB · Views: 674
Very nice!:goodjob::) This thread always has nice goodies to view.
 
Faerie Dragon (unit conversion; Large Version)

Faerie Dragons are little dragons, the size of a pseudodragon or a wyrmling with butterfly (fairy) wings on their back. Although they are small and cute, they can be very powerful. Most faerie dragons are Chaotic Good, they have pure heart but they are very playful.

No Civ Colours.

FaerieDragon.gif

Download here... FaerieDragonLg.rar

Unit32, Large/Small pcx, and Sound Files included. Is a HoMM4 unit.

2 more sized versions will be posted, as well as a recolouration. These all come with Default.flc, but Run.flc is used in it's place in the INI.

-----------------------------------------------

Faerie Dragon (unit conversion; Medium Version)

File reuploaded on 2-20-10 to correct a problem with the Fortify animation.

Faerie Dragons are little dragons, the size of a pseudodragon or a wyrmling with butterfly (fairy) wings on their back. Although they are small and cute, they can be very powerful. Most faerie dragons are Chaotic Good, they have pure heart but they are very playful.

No Civ Colours.

FaerieDragon.gif
(This version smaller than shown in GIF)

Download here... FaerieDragonMed.rar

Unit32, Large/Small pcx, and Sound Files included. Is a HoMM4 unit.

-----------------------------------------------

Faerie Dragon (unit conversion; Small Version)

File reuploaded on 2-20-10 to correct a problem with the Fortify animation.

Faerie Dragons are little dragons, the size of a pseudodragon or a wyrmling with butterfly (fairy) wings on their back. Although they are small and cute, they can be very powerful. Most faerie dragons are Chaotic Good, they have pure heart but they are very playful.

No Civ Colours.

FaerieDragon.gif
(This version smaller than shown in GIF)

Download here... FaerieDragonSm.rar

Unit32, Large/Small pcx, and Sound Files included. Is a HoMM4 unit.



Tom
 
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