To all unit creator : offer of help

[Steph]

This message is in fact for all model designers who use copy&paste to build their units. From my work on Balou's Spetsnaz, where Balou send me the raw bitmaps (like 15 bitmaps for every frame, x 8 direction, for each animation), I know it can be quite long and boring to do the copy & paste in the storyboard.

But I've found a trick to make it faster

So for all designers who works that way, I offer my help : if you can send me all the single bitmaps, I can make the FLC for you.


For more details, contact me by email, using this address : david210174@free.fr

 

[Neomega]

can they be any size?

Currently I use screenshots and save to paint shop pro images, but I could save to BMP if i preferred.

Also, if it's a shortcut how complex could it be?

 

[Steph]

They can be of any size supported by Flicster to build the flc from the storyboard, but all the frames of the same animation must have the same size.

The bmp must be 256 colors, and you must alos sent me the palette (.pal file), so I'm sure to use the exact color you wanted.

Lastly, I have some rules about the name of files. For one animation, they should be organized that way (exemple of a 15 frame unit):

- E
MyUnit0000.bmp
MyUnit0001.bmp
MyUnit0002.bmp
....
MyUnit0014.bmp
- N
MyUnit0000.bmp
MyUnit0001.bmp
MyUnit0002.bmp
....
MyUnit0014.bmp
- NE
MyUnit0000.bmp
MyUnit0001.bmp
MyUnit0002.bmp
....
MyUnit0014.bmp

Each orientation is in its own folder.

I can do 2 layers if needed, if you want to use one for shadow and one for unit itself.

 

[Scipio Africanu]

Well I don't have anything of the sort since I can't seem to ever do anything that painstaking. It's nice to see someone out there helping though, you know what you got Steph? you got style.

 

[Steph]

Thank you for the compliment, but I'm not sure I deserve it. It's not that paintstaking. In fact, providing my "rules" (name of files, etc) are respected, I need about 2 minutes to build a FLC, whatever the number of frames in the animation, and even with 2 layers (yes, with a 25 frames animation with 2 layers, that means 400 bitmaps to copy)

As I told you, I have a trick [dance]

 

[Boulboulgadol]

So tell us about it !
I think this forum is for sharing trics and tips, isn't it ?

It could really help me, I could make more units. But I won't delagate it to someone else. I like to work on my stuff from A to Z, because I'm very meticulous, and I know I can't have a better service than my own one.

 

[Steph]

Well, as I'm very lazy, I thought... doing all the copy&paste takes about one hour for an animation. So for 8 animations, it means 8 hours... So I spend 4 hours writing a small program to do it for me, Civ3_SBB (Story Board Builder).

I cannot share it yet for several reasons :
- I want to test it on several units, and be sure it works perfectly
- I want to improve it to fit with most situation
- I want to integrate the use of the palette directly into it
- And the most important one : right now, it still use some code from my company, that I cannot distribute.

But when I'm happy with it, and I've clean the code to let only the strict minimum, I may share it with everybody.

To achieve it, I need some materials to test the program. Hence the offer.

 

[Kinboat]

This sounds like a wonderful project... I can't actually send any images but I'd like to offer a suggestion... Could you make it able to also resize the images... I currently render my images larger because the program doesn't handle small sizes well... But how hard would it be to add an option to resize all images to AxB before combining them... Just an idea.

 

[Steph]

I probably won't resize the unit, as I don't want to alter what the actual designer of the unit did. My tool will simply do the copy & past. It's just automation. Copying the pixel of the original image into the storyboard is easy to do. Resizing is a bit harder, as the program must decide how to transform the pixels, and wht should be the size.

I think the best is for the designer of the unit to resize it itself, so the result is the exact size he wants. And then to use the tool.

Anyway, I note the suggestion and if I find who to do it nicely, it will be in.

However, what is already in is the possible to change the size of the frame. It does not need to have the size of the orginal FLC. For instance, Balou's Spetsnaz is made of 140x105 bmp.