Unit Design Questions?????

[Mondas]

I am making civ II units but am not satisfied with the result.. Simce I am new to doing this I am unsure If I am doing it right. I keep getting this pink fuzz aropund the units and I can't quite get it as clear as I would like it. It seems to lose some defination and clarily. Here is a link to another unit I did.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=125307

Here is a pic of my nrew unit I am not satisfied with. I am using GIMP to do these units and I have to learn everything for myself so far and was wondering if someone knew what I was doing wrong.

 

[Joeb WK]

You can just manuely remove the fuzz in paint.

 

[Mondas]

Can I just remove it or do I have to paint over it??

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

You have to remove it manually. In paintshop pro there's a nice color replacement function, which you can use to replace the misplaced pink with the proper 'invisible' pink color. Sometimes you will get the best result by doing some manual alterations to these border areas of the rescaled unit.

 

[Mondas]

I don't have Paint Shop Pro. Nor the money to buy it at the moment. Can yiou do it with GIMP??? What's 'invisible' pink color?

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

Not sure what GIMP is, but many Image processors have a similar kind of function, which facilitates color replacement.

The 'invisible pink' is the pink colour of the unit, which becomes invisible in the game. The 'fuzzy' pink colours (that appear in the game) around the borders of your unit appear when you rescale a graphic to a unit size image. Usually the image processor will then make the borders blend with the background, creating the fuzzy pixels around the border of the unit, when it appears in civ2.

 

[Catfish]

So which thread are we supposed to post in? This one, this one or this one?

I have an automated method for dealing with anti-aliasing (the 'pink' edge problem), but firstly, it's for Paint Shop Pro 8.10 and secondly, it's reasonably involved and will probably be lost on someone new to graphics editors. I wrote a tutorial on the subject in Apolyton's Scenario League forum a few years back, but hey, guess what? It's been nuked.

And lets nor forget clarity loss either. How can I fix THAT as well?

As to clarity: well, it's a reduced image; expect clarity loss. To improve things, I mostly use 3 filters. These are (in descending order of importance):

1. Histogram adjustment.
2. Brightness/contrast.
3. Unsharp mask.

I expect there are equivalents for the GIMP. After that it's manual adjustment, ie, paintbrush and airbrush.

What's 'invisible' pink color?

The 'universal' transparent colour for Civ2 graphics, more correctly magenta (#FF00FF) – palette index 253 for 8-bit colour graphics. This colour will not be rendered by the game. If your 'pink' strays from this colour, it will become visible. Civ2 graphics files also have a secondary transparent colour, index 255 – in your units file, this will be a shade of purple (#875387).

Not sure what GIMP is, but many Image processors have a similar kind of function, which facilitates color replacement.

A freeware graphics editor. It looks pretty impressive actually. I've never used it.

 

[Mondas]

Thankls for the insight. If i want to save clarity, should I find a smaller image to use that involves less image reduction?

 

[kobayashi]

Before rescaling, the background should be some colour other than pink, any colour that is near the colour of your unit, in your example, probably orange or yellow. After rescaling, fill in the background with the proper pink and then there may be a few spots which you can cover up with pink manually, but mostly not.

this link to the reference section might help...

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2/reference/Hi-Res.zip

 

[Mondas]

What exactly is rescaling????

 

[Broken_Erika]

Thankls for the insight. If i want to save clarity, should I find a smaller image to use that involves less image reduction?

that usually works best, also too much detail can sometimes be deadly, and jpegs are evil,

 

[Catfish]

Thankls for the insight. If i want to save clarity, should I find a smaller image to use that involves less image reduction?

Not necessarily. More important is the amount of detail. Overly complicated images will often look a mess following large-scale downsizing. That means more post-reduction work.

BTW, the unit in your first post is too large. Its left foot will disappear into the ground. Any part of the unit that appears below the area marked by the magenta diamond will be obscured by adjacent terrain tiles.

Before rescaling, the background should be some colour other than pink, any colour that is near the colour of your unit, in your example, probably orange or yellow.

I always promote the source image as a new raster layer and erase the background details completely (ie, no colour) before resizing, but then again I use a completely different method to remove the effects of anti-aliasing.

What exactly is rescaling????

Apparently it's an obscure synonym for resizing.

…and jpegs are evil,

Huh?

 

[Mondas]

I must be a complete boob. I tried everything you suggested and still nothing.

 

[Mondas]

Here's another unit I am having trouble with.