Help with editing unit icons

[Revenant]

I tried to modify some unit icons, but I am hopelessly bogged.

I have to say I do not have any experience with graphical programs, know absolutely nothing about how palette works and so on... I just want to do some minor changes on unit icons included in MTW.

I found guide from DukeJohn and tried to follow it, but:

3.1.1 Unit Icon
Function: this icon is used in battles in the bar at the bottom of the screen.
Location: \Battle\UnitIcons\
Format: UnitName.LBM, 256 colours
Sample:

Editing: This icon requires a carefull approach when editing. First #find a suitable existing MTW icon, increase the colour depth to 24-bit and change the image. If the icon is a bit sharply edged then enlarge the image by 200% use a smooth filter ,be carefull not to overdo the smoothing and reduce the image back to it's original size.
Next find any suitable exising 256-colour MTW palette and use it. Make sure that the background colour is R:207, G:207, B:199. Next copy the entire picture in your painting program and then paste it over an exisiting MTW unit icon in Ultimate Paint. Then save it.

I took icon, loaded it into graphical program (Ultimate Paint in this case). I do not know what the thing "increase colour depth" means - I just did some changes to picture, then saved it as LBM. Picture was ok, but color of the dress of soldier represented on icon did not change to his faction color on battle screen - it was green and purple no matter what faction I selected.

I also do not know what the line " Next find any suitable exising 256-colour MTW palette and use it" means... Where can I get this palette?



...

Can somebody please help me to learn how to change this icons? I know a lot about how MTW works, but I am total noob in this...

[Revenant]

Nobody can help me? :o

Maybe If I give more information...

I am using Ultimate Paint and I just want to change icon from Battle\UnitIcons.

I loaded the old icon, made changes and then save it. Everything looks ok, except the fact that pieces of tunic that should have factional colors are always pink and green.

I found several topics concerning this, but I am not sure if anybody came to solution? It is true that every mod I saw that changed this battleicons used only predefined colors, never icons with changing factionals colors, so managed somebody to achieve this?

[macsen rufus]

Hi Revenant - probably the first thing you should do is download a copy of Mithel Image Converter from the "Downloads" section. This is a great little utility that allows you to convert LBMs to other formats.

1) Use Mithel to open the uniticon you want to edit
2) "Save the colourtable" as your first action
3) Save the file to another format (I suggest PNG - JPEG is lossy)
4) Open the PNG in a graphics app that can handle it
5) Do your editing then save it to 256 colour Bitmap (.BMP) format (UP may be able to do 4 & 5, but it can't save LBMs correctly for MTW)
6) Open the BMP with Mithel
7) "Load the colourtable" (ie the one you just saved in 2)
8) Save as an LBM again
9) Copy across to your uniticon folder with the correct filename

This is the simplest, least "technical" route I can think of, and the faction colours should still work

If it doesn't work, come back and holler again

[Revenant]

It works.

Thank you, man, you helped me greatly!

But I have another problem, this time it is of course creating review_panel icons :/

I tried to do it as DukeJohn wrote, but with bad results. I worked in Photoshop and Paint Shop pro 9.

According to guide, I loaded battlemap icon, filled background with purple (I do not know if I did it right - At first I tried to change parameters of background color, then just created new color 255,0,255 a then fill background with it) , then saved it as TGA with described parameters, then used PurpGrab, but the result was always Biff with messed colors.

Then I tried to save it as BMP and used biffreader to create new .Bif, importing data from BMP. This time the result was better, but background was not trasparent (the only fault, even faction colors worked).

I tried to fill it by trasparent color by hand in Biffreader, but then infamous "black dots" appeared.

I read several discussions about this issues, but again did not find solution.

[macsen rufus]

If you've got Photoshop you can try another route, but I've had mixed results on anything with faction colours. I keep meaning to try out the PurpGrab method but haven't quite got around to it yet

Generally for reviewpanel icons, if I'm modifying an existing one, I export to BMP with BIFreader, open in Photoshop and again save the palette (it's in IMAGE > MODE). Then I do the editing as required, reload the colour palette (or convert to indexed using the saved palette if I've had to change it to RGB to do the edits), save as a BMP (again 256 colour) and put it back into BIFreader - but there can be occasional black spots. I find it helps to set the second colour in the colour table to something outrageous that you won't use (I go for turquoise ). Do this by opening up the colour table of your image, double clicking on the second colour (ie colour 1, as it starts at 0), then setting the RGB values. As far as I can tell this seems to be some sort of secondary (or possibly part) transparency colour, hence why I chose a colour that won't appear in the actual image.

If your background came out not transparent it seems like the colour value might be slightly off - check the colour table of your BMP (in Photoshop) and if necessary adjust colour 0 to "008000" in the HEX box (IIRC: 0,128,0 in RGB), resave, and re-BIF-ify it.

It's definitely worth investing some time in studying Photoshop's colour mode menu, and building a library of colour palettes, saves a lot of heart-ache in the long run

[Revenant]

That was fast, thanks.

And just one question:

What to do if I want to create review panel icon from battle icon?

Should I simply load it into photoshop, convert it to BMP and then continue as you wrote?