Help with PopHeads...

[Gen. Rommel]

I've been working on creating some custom PopHeads to add to the library of the already existing modifications. So far they've turned out alright (though, I'd like to here some specific feedback later on when I post the intro thread) but I still need to add cov specific colors...my question is, how do I make civ specfic color patches? What color do they have to be? How do I get them to mesh good with the actual head?

Any help is greatly appreciated, as always!

 

[Keroro]

Oh God, not popheads. There is a certain section of the palatte that is given over to civcolour. This makes editing the palatte on this file a bit tricky. Take a look at the original popheads - the bright green areas are the bits that show up as civcolour in the game. BUT, there may be sections of green that are not civcolour - it depends on where it is in the palatte.

If you're still having problems (after my typically muddled response) then let me know and I'll try to post some screens tonight showing you what I mean.

 

[Gen. Rommel]

Well, I already knew about the green areas being the civ color (since those were the areas that always changed in game), but have to admit I hadn't heard of the palette allocation being the key to applying civ colors. Only question now is, which colors on the palette are the according civ color ones?

By the way, I'm using photoshop, if that helps any?

 

[Keroro]

Well, I already knew about the green areas being the civ color (since those were the areas that always changed in game), but have to admit I hadn't heard of the palette allocation being the key to applying civ colors. Only question now is, which colors on the palette are the according civ color ones?

I can't quite remember, though I think they were near the beginning of the palatte in GIMP. I've been suffering a bit from eyestrain recently (too much modding over the May bank holiday weekend ) and have a nightclass tonight, so I probably won't be able to post any screens until Thursday night - but if you're still having trouble then let me know (PM me if you want) and I'll put a little guide together. I must admit that I had a lot of trouble with popheads myself.

By the way, I'm using photoshop, if that helps any?

Not really - I use GIMP, which seems to handle palattes slightly differently.

 

[BadKharma]

In Photoshop they appear in the beginning. Usually there are 2 colors pink and lime green however on the popheads they are 2 pink colors. The first is the standard one 255, 0, 255 the second is 255. 87. 255. If you look at the pophead pcx the lighter second pink color is the division lines that form the boxes around each seperate pophead. See attached image.

You access the color table by choosing image/mode/color table for an allready indexed image, for a new creation image/mode/indexed color/custom will generate the indexed color table for you and allow you to specifically set any colors you need.

 

[Keroro]

@ Badkharma - the question was how to get proper civcolour I think, not proper transparency. Though your explanation of transparency is much clearer than the one I came up with a while ago.

In Photoshop they appear in the beginning. Usually there are 2 colors pink and lime green however on the popheads they are 2 pink colors. The first is the standard one 255, 0, 255 the second is 255. 87. 255. If you look at the pophead pcx the lighter second pink color is the division lines that form the boxes around each seperate pophead. See attached image.

You access the color table by choosing image/mode/color table for an allready indexed image, for a new creation image/mode/indexed color/custom will generate the indexed color table for you and allow you to specifically set any colors you need.

But, we can use your screenshot.

Gen. Rommel - you'll see that there is a block of 16 colours at the end of the palatte that are various shades of green. These are the civcolour indexes. If you use a colour in one of these indexes then it will show up in game as the same shade of whatever the civcolour is. So for example, if you use the light green from right at the end of the palatte, and you play a civ with the colour purple, then it will show up light purple in game.

Now it gets a bit more complicated. The palatte can contain the same colour more than once. If you want some details to show up green in the game regardless of what civ the pophead belongs to then you need to make sure that you use one of the indexes that are not on that bottom line. This goes for the transparent colours too - you can still use the magenta colour (255, 0, 255) in the popheads if you want, but you have to make sure it is in one of the non-transparent slots if you want it to show in game. It may be considerably easier for you just to ignore this paragraph when starting out, since you probably don't need to know this. In fact I don't know why I typed it out really.

Here's another screen from the GIMP, in case anyone is trying to follow with that program. Basically the palatte is reversed - the two transparent colours come at the end, and the 16 civcolours come at the beginning. However, the exact same principles apply.


One general piece of advice on this - I strongly suggest that you don't convert the image to RGB while you're editting it - reconstructing the palatte is no fun when you come to convert back to Indexed.

I won't go into any artistic advice for you, since you're probably better at that than I am. I look forward to whatever you come up with.

 

[Gen. Rommel]

^ That seems to make sense. But what baffles me isn't which colors turn into civ specific colors in game (I figured those last 16 were the ones required to change it) but rather, what to apply to my new images (the ones I have imported into the file, or simplier said, the new popheads). At first, I thought I merely needed to apply one shade of green to a certain are to see it as civ colored in game, but that looked horrendous (even though I didn't check it in game, it looked like crud in photoshop). I need to get it to look like the default popheads. Do I need to do this pixel for pixel?

In Photoshop they appear in the beginning. Usually there are 2 colors pink and lime green however on the popheads they are 2 pink colors. The first is the standard one 255, 0, 255 the second is 255. 87. 255. If you look at the pophead pcx the lighter second pink color is the division lines that form the boxes around each seperate pophead. See attached image.

You access the color table by choosing image/mode/color table for an allready indexed image, for a new creation image/mode/indexed color/custom will generate the indexed color table for you and allow you to specifically set any colors you need.

Thanks for posting that bit, but as Keroro said, the transparency is not what's posing the problem...thank you nonetheless.

 

[BadKharma]

OK now I understand what you are driving at. No you do not need to do it pixel by pixel. The last row of 16 colours is all the shades of green so depending on what colour you are using in your new popheads is what you will need to set the final 16 blocks to be using the method for indexing colour/forced /custom that will open a clean pallette that you can set the first colors and the last 16 colours to. If for example blue in your popheads is going to be the civ color save the color table (ACT) from the initial indexing so you can set all the blue colors from it to the last 16 spaces.

 

[Keroro]

Yes, yes - do what he says.

I found it easier to just keep the palatte as it was, but then I was only cut n' pasting work from other popheads files into one. If you're going to be making popheads from scratch (which I think you are) then what BadKharma says is the way to go. Just make sure that you only have 16 shades of whatever you use as the civcolour.

 

[Gen. Rommel]

Alright, I'll see what I can conjur up with your tips.

I won't go into any artistic advice for you, since you're probably better at that than I am. I look forward to whatever you come up with.

Don't overestimate me...I'll most likely not impress anyone with my amateur graphic imagery skills.

 

[Gen. Rommel]

UPDATE: For a preview of these popheads, go to:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5699375#post5699375

Any moderator may close this thread now, since it's basically not needed anymore (I did figure out the answer to my question afterall). Big thanks to Keroro and BadKharma for helping me.

 

[Zefyrinus]

I was looking for help on the pop heads and found this thread. I have two problems. One is that I wanted to make some changes to the policemen and engineers so that one can see their nationality. It seems like this post is adressing it:

OK now I understand what you are driving at. No you do not need to do it pixel by pixel. The last row of 16 colours is all the shades of green so depending on what colour you are using in your new popheads is what you will need to set the final 16 blocks to be using the method for indexing colour/forced /custom that will open a clean pallette that you can set the first colors and the last 16 colours to. If for example blue in your popheads is going to be the civ color save the color table (ACT) from the initial indexing so you can set all the blue colors from it to the last 16 spaces.

But I just can't understand it. Can someone please translate this to clear English for me? I'm sorry, but that one sentence just goes on and on, and I can't make any sense out of it.

The other problem I have is that I switched places between the ancient and modern, and between the medieval and industrial heads. The results look awful in game.

I don't know if you can see it clearly on this image, but there are all these odd colored pixels everywhere. It shows up most clearly on the edge between the hair and the headdress of the women to the left. Here you can also see my attempt to give the policeman civ-specific color. I just copied shades of green from the modern era engineer's helmet, but that did not give pretty results.

 

[Puppeteer]

The art used by Civ3 is done in 256-color palette, even though the final display is 32 (??) -bit color. The color substitutions for transparency and civ color is done by palette index, not color. Back in the day when I did some popheads mods I found it helpful/necessary to ensure the palette didn't get messed up by auto conversions to/from 32- or 16-bit color that many editors do when you make a new file.

It's been quite a few years, but I think the simplest way is to copy the Civ3-provided art file, open it, make sure it's still in 256-color mode and then start editing.

Edit: In other words, you have a palette of 256 colors minus one for transparency and 16 (?) for shades of civ color. There might be some shade color palette spots taken up, too. The index meaning of the color palette won't change, but the color in your editor can.

 

[Puppeteer]

This is the color palette in Gimp for the popheads file. The top row--16 "colors" (actually palette spots 0-15)--are various shades of the civ color. No matter what those colors look like in the editor/file, in-game any pixels with those "colors" (again, palette index) will map to shades of the civ color.

The bottom-right two (palette index 254-255) are I think shaded transparency and transparency.

From color-picking around I can see the range of the badly-circled palette range seems to be civ-color related, too, but it doesn't look to be a neat gradient, at least in-editor. Be aware there are primary and secondary civ colors! I think all of the included BIQs have two shades of the same color, but it's quite possible to have two completely different civ colors, and I'm not sure how that maps into the palette.

The important part to remember is that the color replacement is based on the palette position, and each pixel is painted with a palette index, not a color. You can change the color of all, for example, pixels painted with palette index 100 by changing that color in the palette, and that's what accidentally happens when either an editor messes with the palette--a problem when converting between color modes--or a palette-unaware person starts customizing or starts from scratch.

My Gimp palette order seems to disagree with the quote from earlier (bottom row vs top row), so I don't know if my editor and their editor sorted the palette differently or if modern Gimp did something goofy. But hopefully you get the idea.

 

[Zefyrinus]

I'm using Photoshop. For me the 16 greens are at the bottom of the palette, and the two magentas at the top. Anyway, I have just copied the original file, and in Photoshop it's in something called indexed color mode. I've even compared the palette of the original file with the palette of my copied file, and they seem to be identical. So that's why I don't understand why there are some pixels here and there that in the game look wrong, even when all I've done is switching places between two original pop heads.

 

[Vuldacon]

Zefyrinus... Most the Colors you are seeing that are not correct are some dark green colors that were suppose to be Civ Colors (Reds on your Posted Image).
When you copied and pasted the images, Other colors that are also in the palette were placed rather than the correct colors found in the Civ Specific colors area.
There are also a few other Non Civ colors that are not correct.
It appears that some colors were placed by maintaining the indexes and those differ between the original palette and what Photoshop uses.

The indexes are not correct. If the images you copy use the same palette as the File you are pasting them on, maintaining indexes would work but Photoshop uses a reversed palette.
When pasting, Try using "Nearest Color Matching" rather than indexed color mode to see if that corrects the problem. The indexed colors are important but I believe the reversed palette is causing problems when pasting.
The saved palette should have the Civ Colors on Top and Two transparent color slots on the bottom Right.
Have you tried saving the original Palette then loading it again maintaining indexes before saving the File?

The Civ Specific Colors are more than the 16 colors... those are all Civ Colors but there are many more on the first Four Rows of the Non Reversed palette.
If you have not changed and saved your popHeads.pcx before, then the original palette is correct but Photoshop probably shows the palette reversed when viewing it. If you make changes and save the file, it is probably saving the reversed palette with incorrect colors on the indexed palette.

 

[Plotinus]

I didn't look at the dates on these posts, and so I was surprised, happy, and sad all at once to follow Gen. Rommel's link and see Stormrage commenting first...

 

[Zefyrinus]

What I did was that I copied the whole original file, then I cut and pasted within that copy. I'll see if I can solve with your advice.