GIMP icon help?

[Civitar]

Embarrassing question, seeing as I'm already making icons for other people's mods, but:

How do I make bits of the icons stick out of the circle with GIMP?​

Whenever I do this, in-game I get an empty metallic circle where the icon should be.

 

[regalman]

dont know about gimp, but in Photoshop, go near the layers tab and you'll see something called "channels" next to the layers,
first download this template made by sukritact, its very helpful for beginners
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=18528

1. from the layers, select the portion you want sticking out using the select tools. ie. magic wand tool, lasso tool.
2. select the black circle layer from the layers menu and delete that part from this layer, repeat for the other circular layers you may have, such as the grey or the yellow one below the black one
3. now go to the channels and select "Alpha" at the bottom and delete that part from the alpha
the white part in the alpha is the part that will show up ingame, the black part wont.

if you need more clarification, pm me

 

[Civitar]

Sorry, I don't use Photoshop. Thanks for the offer though.

 

[Harald B]

Are you saying that if you take an icon you got to work and change it to go outside the circle a bit, it suddenly doesn't work? That seems preposterous. You should be seeing something. (Empty metallic circle is the usual frame, ergo failure to load the icon.) Check the steps you are taking to get from GIMP to in-game.

 

[Civitar]

No, I'm not saying I take an icon I got to work already, I'm saying I've gotten other icons that don't go outside the circle to work, but any icons that do give the metallic circle.

 

[Barbarian King]

I'm not very skilled with creating artwork, but I have created a few unit icons with GIMP (including one with overhanging elements) so I might be able to help. Are you using layers? Generally it works best to merge all of your layers before exporting to a dds (I've forgotten to do this before and ended up with an non-working icon). Also, have you made sure that your image files are the correct size? This thread provides a reference on proper dimensions; having an image that is the wrong size can cause it not to load. How I made my icon with pieces coming out from the circle was to simply create the icon I wanted on a transparent background, not using any alpha layers, and that worked for me. There is probably a more elegant way to do things that someone who's skilled at image manipulation could recommend, but that does work.

 

[Civitar]

By the time I export to DDS, I only have one layer, either because I deleted unneeded ones or merged needed ones together.

 

[PrimoXanthous]

By the time I export to DDS, I only have one layer, either because I deleted unneeded ones or merged needed ones together.

what kind of icons do you trying to create??? an alpha for units??, a portrait for buildings?? units? civ, .what kind?? or better show some result of your work, the icon itself and a screen shot in game.

EDIT:
Or maybe your icon is too big or too small
the 256px icon should be 170px or 172px

Spoiler :

 

[Civitar]

@PrimoXanthous:

Sorry I took so long to reply. To answer your question, I'm trying to make icons for leaders and units, both of which protrude from the 172px circle. I have saved the icons as .dds and set VFS=True in ModBuddy - I know how to add icons in general, I've done it many times before - it's just appearing as this (the first attachment) in game.

The second attachment contains the icon in .png format and separated from the rest of the atlas that I am trying to add.