.BIF

[Baron von Alvincy]

Does any one knoes how to open and edit .BIF files?
I tried Shoguns BIF reader, but you could only open and convert to.BMP.
My question is, how can I edit .BIF files, for instance that in Med I tw?

Thanks
Baron of Alvincy

[macsen rufus]

You have two choices - use BIFReader itself and edit one pixel at a time, or - convert to BMP and use any graphics package you like Using BMPs is MUCH easier...

1) Open file with BIFReader
2) "Export all frames to BMP" (some BIFs eg unit animations have more than one frame)
3) Open with Photoshop, Paint, or whatever you prefer to do your editing
4) Save the colour table first
5) Edit the pics
6) Reload the colour table if necessary
7) Save your edited file as a .BMP, 8-bit depth, indexed (ie 256 colours)
8) Open BIFReader, make a NEW BIF of the correct size and number of frames
9) IMPORT ALL FRAMES
10) Save BIF

That's it! You have your new edited BIF to admire and enjoy

[Baron von Alvincy]

Wow, thx Macsen R.
It seems that you know everything

[caravel]

@macsen rufus: I'm a great Spotted Bif maker, I'm wondering if your technique will allow me to produce "Spotless Bif"? What's that about importing the palette? is that using mithel again or something else?

[R'as al Ghul]

@macsen rufus: I'm a great Spotted Bif maker, I'm wondering if your technique will allow me to produce "Spotless Bif"? What's that about importing the palette? is that using mithel again or something else?

That's a photoshop function. Really useful.
I was wondering if we have ever documented what's causing the spots?
I keep forgetting these things when I don't work on it. I know barocca mailed me a method some time ago. I'll check if I can find it.
To me it seems that part of the problem is to create the right kind of bitmap.
May sound strange but there are different bitmap formats, the latest photoshop for example doesn't give me the correct bitmaps, I need to use my 6.0 for that.

[macsen rufus]

For faction shields, reviewpanel BIFs, etc etc, I find the quick and cheesy way to avoid unwanted spots is to set Index 1 in the BMP colour palette (ie the 2nd colour - we start at 0, of course) to something so outrageous that it will not be used in your image - I normally use a particularly foul variant of turquoise, something like 00ffff - yes, that sort of cheesy turquoise This appears to be a "secondary transparency" slot in the index, and can cause lots of problems, so avoid using it...

Of course I have lots of faction shields made from before I learnt this little trick, so have black or white showing up as this "secondary transparency" (anyone who's seen the pre-battle shield for my germanic faction knows this ).

When it comes to the info-pics - an area where a lot of "spotty" pics show up in mods - then I have a work-round rather than a solution... Any infopic that is so much as opened and re-saved using BIFReader will, if it has transparent pixels in small areas, generate small black spots. Now a BIG area of transparency with SHARP EDGES is fine, but the little bits in the actual picture go spotty.

So when I make an infopic I actually start off with a BMP version of the blank parchment, change to RGB to work with layers, and add my image as a new layer and merge down, then I cut out as much parchment to leave the actual picture on a squared-off background, and ensure that the "cut out" area is "Bif transparent green" (008000) before going back into indexed mode by reloading the original BMP colour table. It means the files are slightly larger than if the area of transparency was maximised, but not so much that you'd want the black spots instead

So long as the indexing is correct you can't see the joins when the infopics are displayed.

I use Photoshop 7 for my actual editing, I'm sure there's something more recent, but if it ain't bust, don't fix it

To save and reload colour tables for Photoshop it's quite simple:

1) go to Image>Mode - this will indicate which mode you're in - indexed, greyscale, RGB (and probably CMYK) are the major ones
2) if your image is already indexed there is an item labelled "Colour table" in the drop down menu (this is greyed out in other modes)
3) Click this and it will display the colour table as a grid, showing the colours and more important THEIR POSITION IN THE INDEX. The important positions are 0, 1 and 255 (I'm not sure exactly what 255 does but it seems to affect some transparencies and BIFreader interprets this colour as some sort of "colour mode" statement.)
4) You can save this colour table easily (just hit "Save colour table", find somewhere safe for it and think up a suitable name - I now have a folder called "Palettes" and it's full of things like FN_01.act, info_pic.act, etc.
5) When you want to reload a colour table it's also very simple --> IMAGE > MODE > INDEXED COLOUR - this will bring up a dialogue box asking how you want to index it. Select CUSTOM > LOAD COLOUR TABLE and pick up the .act file you need and away you go
6) AFAIK the .act file format is an Adobe thing and I don't think it can load into other software - but that doesn't mean other software doesn't have an equivalent functionality, I just don't know where you'd find it
7) I forgot to mention - whilst the colour table is open you can edit any colour in there - a double click will take you to the colour selector, and you can enter values as RGB or HEX as well as selecting from a mixing board. Particularly useful when setting up faction shields etc, as you can get the actual faction colours you want easily, and also means you can correct the transparency indices if they get mangled

When saving BMPs then you do need a full 256 colours for BIFReader to be able to use it, by the way.