Removing pink from units + licensing

[sadu]

Hi Modders,

I have been enjoying your most wonderful creations for years - the Warhammer mod for Civ3 being my favourite, but the list is long

I'm now tinkering with writing a little game for Android devices, and as it happens what I'm wanting to do is medieval themed and contains combat between small 2D units.

It occurred to me that there is an absolute tonne of excellent user-created content here for Civ3 which would fit perfectly into what I'm trying to do. I'd never in a million years be able to create anything of this quality myself, but I gather people make this content available for a reason right?

So 2 questions...

1. Regarding licensing - what's the general attitude of the content creators in terms of using the work on a non-civ3 project? I realise this likely varies between artists - but is it fair to say that most content creators will be ok about their units being used in an Android game (providing proper attribution is given etc)?

Just to clarify, this is a $0 budget game where the primary purpose is to teach me how to program for Android - but if it turns out cool, then it would be nice to have the option to release it. If I did feel like making the project non-free, is that likely to be a problem for people? Most of the units I have downloaded and tinkered with so far don't have any license file or mention of such things - does this mean it's a BSD-style "do what you like but be polite and respectful" type license?

2. How do I remove the pink from the unit animations? I'm looking to have each frame of the animation in a alpha-transparent png. I found the excellent FLICster program on this forum which allowed me to open the flc file - great. Then I exported to PCX, great. Now I have each frame available in a PCX which I can open in Photoshop, but the images have the lovely pink all over them.

Is there a way to remove the pink from the PCX images while retaining the shadows? I have Photoshop and while I'm no expert if someone could point me in the right direction I can usually find my way.

As I understand, the pink is isolated on it's own channel (maybe not the right word) - so how do I remove that before exporting to png-24?

Or failing that, is there a better way to convert a .flc into a png-24 with alpha transparency?

Thanks everyone, any feedback appreciated

 

[tom2050]

If you do sell the game, my guess would be you would have to get each member's specific okay to use their units for a product you plan to make money off of. If they are no longer on the forums, a moderator would have to let you know about that, I'm not sure myself. In general, I would guess that credits should be given at all times.

Also, some units are conversions from other games, in which the members have/should have gotten permission to use them from the company for non-profit purposes. It would be illegal in most cases to use these units for profit in any circumstances, and they are (in all cases I know) only to be used for non-profit use (which can mean more than just for personal use), as these companies (such as NDoors AO units which I have been doing) have said that it is okay as long as it is not for profit in any way shape or form (directly or indirectly).

For specifics, a moderator should explain how things work on the forum overall in that regards, though.

BTW: You can use Photoshop to remove all the magenta coloring in several ways. The easiest that comes to mind would be to do so while the PCX is still paletted, by changing all the magenta (first 1 or 2 rows of the palette) to a single unique color (most could use ff00ff); and then simply changing the image to RGB and cutting the magenta out of the image using e.g. magic wand (or to copy inverse selection of the magenta to an image with a transparent background). You could set up a Photoshop Action to do this all very quickly with minimal work yourself.

 

[Plotinus]

On the question of rights, I think that will be down to the original creators, so you should send PMs to the people whose units you want to use and see what they say. Bear in mind that there could be issues with the models that the unit creators have used - e.g. most of the human units here use the Paperdoll human figure which Kinboat made. But I'm not sure what the situation is with that kind of issue, especially as Kinboat isn't active here any more.

Personally I'm happy for people to use my units in other projects as long as they let me know and the project will be free. If the project will be money-making then I think I'd want to work out some kind of small deal, as units do take a lot of time and effort to make...

On the question of the pink, Photoshop is completely beyond me so I couldn't say, but my instinct would be simply to identify the pink shades in the palette (they are all in a line there) and replace them manually with the colour you want. But Vuldacon is probably the person to ask about this sort of thing.

 

[BadKharma]

Hi Modders,
2. How do I remove the pink from the unit animations? I'm looking to have each frame of the animation in a alpha-transparent png. I found the excellent FLICster program on this forum which allowed me to open the flc file - great. Then I exported to PCX, great. Now I have each frame available in a PCX which I can open in Photoshop, but the images have the lovely pink all over them.

Is there a way to remove the pink from the PCX images while retaining the shadows? I have Photoshop and while I'm no expert if someone could point me in the right direction I can usually find my way.

As I understand, the pink is isolated on it's own channel (maybe not the right word) - so how do I remove that before exporting to png-24?

Or failing that, is there a better way to convert a .flc into a png-24 with alpha transparency?

Thanks everyone, any feedback appreciated

Actually using photoshop you need to extract all the pink because currently it is being used for transparency. Also you need to place the shadow on it's own layer and then lower the layer transparency so it will act like a shadow in a PNG image. Because all the pink is a single shade the magic wand (W) will work to isolate it by using a very low tolerance to catch any stray pixels.

 

[Steph]

And if we want to be technical, a lot of untis here are made with SBB, and it's supposed to be for non profit use...
My apply to Flicster to.

 

[Takhisis]

So if Kinboat says 'no profit from my paperdoll' then no paperdoll-based unit can be used, even though the unit's maker says it's fine?

 

[Kyriakos]

The civ3 community's response to Sadu can be summed up with this i think:

 

[sadu]

Bah, managed to lose my post somehow, but the gist was this:

Thanks for your responses, sounds like people are generally happy for the work to be used in a non-commercial sense, commercial may be a problem.

I have managed to manipulate the pink out of the images in Photoshop and it comes out looking ok, though I do get the impression there's a better way. What software do people use for creating these animated units? Apparently it's not Photoshop?

 

[General 666]

For the pink :
I`m not really sure if it works ,but it should ...

In Flicster you can change the background color to Alpha. So do it ,and on the export tab select "Current viewed palette" (or so). Generate the storyboard and check if it`s grey.

 

[sadu]

@General 666 - that didn't work unfortunately, the image came out with the pink attached.

I just noticed that some units are much easier to clean up than others. For example, the default Civ3 warrior unit from Firaxis - it has one shade of pink for the background, and another shade for the shadow - nothing in between. Piece of cake to isolate these using the magic wand.

I'm not sure how many user-made units are like this, so this may not be a solution as such (and I'm not wanting to / not allowed to use the stock units anyway).

 

[tom2050]

It should be fairly simple regardless; many user made units have shades of magenta surrounding the units because that is how they are rendered with anti-aliasing against the background.

The PCX Storyboards or Individual PCX images will be paletted from Flicster when you export them. Open the unit image in Photoshop. Use Photoshop to open the Palette (Image -> Mode -> Color Table).

The first 2 rows will / may contain variations of magenta... simply change the first 2 rows to a single Magenta Color (ff00ff hex color, or 255,0,255 RGB). If you want the storyboard palette in tact, then leave the 2nd color in the first row alone, as this is sometimes the border color.

* You have a single Magenta background now. Then Image -> Mode -> RGB (changes to RGB image, which is not paletted any longer); use Magic Wand (uncheck Contiguous, No Tolerance needed) to select all Magenta on the screen. Select -> Inverse; and there you go, you have the borders and the units to copy and paste into a new blank image with transparent background. And simply adjust the process to what you need.

Takes maybe a couple minutes at most, and if you make a Photoshop Action, can be automated and done in under a half-minute. Furthermore, you can use Photoshop Actions (info for this can be found on Web; simply records a set of actions to do) in a Batch Process (File->Automate->Batch) to complete as many as needed. Let me know if you have any trouble.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

As I've stated before (perhaps I should make a post in one of my library threads and link it in my sig), but my units are under a modified GNU/Creative Commons license: I.e. you can use them any way you want, but #1: It must be non-commercial, #2: Credit must be given where credit is due, and #3: if the work in non Civ III-related, then a link to the unit(s) or my unit library (link is in my sig) must be provided (part of the "open source" concept)

The main reason I added the "non-commercial" clause is because (a) unit making is VERY time-consuming and I'd at least want a cut and (b) a number of my were created using Poser figures, props and/or textures that were only licensed for non-commercial uses, and using my units that use said figures, props and/or textures would be a violation of the license agreement....

 

[nick0515]

What are Android devices?

 

[Steph]

Robots looking like a human.

 

[nick0515]

Robots looking like a human.

Oh, so he wants to make a game for the human-like robots to play?

 

[Steph]

No... My definition was the general meaning.
Androids in this contest is a competitor to the iPhone

 

[Z3.141593_5G]

I found that if you are using Photoshop that the pcx images are Indexed color instead of RGB. All you have to do is go to image next to file and edit there you change from color to RGB. Images with Indexed color cannot have layers, but RGB can have layers. You can then edit the pcx file in any way once in RGB mode, but the most important thing is to merge layers and switch back from RGB color to Indexed color.

 

[General 666]

@General 666 - that didn't work unfortunately, the image came out with the pink attached.

I`ve seen storyboards with grey background ,so I know there is a way.
But I think now I got it :

Generate a normal storyboard. Flicster will create a Alpha.pal as well. Apply this pal to the storyboard. The background should be grey now.

(sorry i`m not on my civ-machine right now)

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

What the General said, but also make sure that when you apply the palette, choose the option that says something about "maintain color indexes" and NOT "match nearest color" or "Match color dithering"

 

[Vuldacon]

Generate the Storyboard with Flicster and save the Alpha.pal Palette where you can access it to apply it to the storyboard using your Graphics Editing Program.

Apply the Alpha.pal Palette using Maintain Indexes. This will replace all "Smoke" and Shadow shades with the Alpha palette shades while maintaining all color slots the same.