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Problems with Gimp & Mod tags?


RMM

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Hi all,

Problems with GIMP:

Spent much of this afternoon trying to edit some floating icons in BfN the way I'd like them, and thought I was making great progress doing the edits in GIMP (free Photoshop(ish) program) until I opened the game. While GIMP had made the edits, when it exported back to a bmp file, it somehow shifted the image slightly to the left, so that the very left side of the icon image was on the right of the square (like how a TV picture can appear if you've got it off centre). Insight anyone? What have other mod editors used, since it's obviously doable given how many floating icon mods are out there. Rather not think about spending a sum on Photoshop.

Mod Tags:

Also finished up sorting through DKC's enormous and comprehensive BfN/MG/CM... mod and gleefully jumped into Lonsdale's Block to see the changes to the Airborne Jeep graphics only to just see the stock US jeep 🤔 . DKC's UK vehicles mod contained two tagged, jeep mods for 1 para and 3 para, both tags of which are on the .btt file. Is that the problem - the game doesn't know which one to pick, since both are applicable?   

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1 hour ago, Redwolf said:

BMP is an underspecified format, there's often room for interpretation.

LOL that's a great way of putting it.

I know people have figured out the settings for GIMP and Photoshop to save a BMP that will work in game but I never have. I got frustrated trying to get Photoshop to work and eventually just switched to the Greenfish editor: http://greenfishsoftware.org/gfie.php

It's default settings for Windows BMP files work for me in game.

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@RMM I use GiMP a lot and have never had that happen.

No offense, but I would say that if you are an inexperienced GiMP user, it most likely was something YOU did accidentally and not GiMP behaving oddly. There are keystroke short cuts and settings and lots of ways to step on a landmine as an inexperienced user. I salute you for trying. Perhaps try again.

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2 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

@RMM I use GiMP a lot and have never had that happen.

No offense, but I would say that if you are an inexperienced GiMP user, it most likely was something YOU did accidentally and not GiMP behaving oddly. There are keystroke short cuts and settings and lots of ways to step on a landmine as an inexperienced user. I salute you for trying. Perhaps try again.

No offense taken; I appreciate your taking the time to reply. I did quite a bit of Photoshop in the day, but that was a long time ago. I did figure out the off-centre issue which was in the export settings. Under 'Compatibility Options', I had to select 'Do not write color space info', and that got the image centred. I wasn't able however, to recreate the transparent masks, such as Juju did for his triangle mortar icons. Thoughts? I tried creating an Alpha channel for transparency on the outside, black area, but that just turned the entire icon black in the game. Gave up at that point.

Since you use GIMP, how would you go about editing say, just the colours and border transparency for these icons then? I thought it would be a simply enough issue of using the bucket to fill the imported image and/or the background and then, just export the result as a bmp; however, that turned out to not be the case.

Must say the nice thing about GIMP is that it is pretty easy to start learning and very easy to do internet searched for any questions or issues, plus a really good, community-forum support.

Edited by RMM
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1 hour ago, RMM said:

Thoughts? I tried creating an Alpha channel for transparency on the outside, black area, but that just turned the entire icon black in the game. Gave up at that point.

Let me first say...I am NOT an expert, just an amateur struggling along maybe not far from your level of proficiency!

I am at work and don't have my notes but I think the thing to check is the RGB settings of the "BLACK" you are bucket filling into your areas to make transparent. It can look black but that is not good enough, it must be 0,0,0 I think. I can post later from home to clarify.

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2 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

Let me first say...I am NOT an expert, just an amateur struggling along maybe not far from your level of proficiency!

I am at work and don't have my notes but I think the thing to check is the RGB settings of the "BLACK" you are bucket filling into your areas to make transparent. It can look black but that is not good enough, it must be 0,0,0 I think. I can post later from home to clarify.

Interesting, I will definitely check that. When I selected 'transparent' in GIMP for that area, it showed in GIMP as transparent, but that may not be true once it's converted into bmp for the game. As you, it has to be true black. Tks :)  

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Not sure if this is part of the issue...

I just remembered, GiMP has some stupid issue with not being able to export BMP files with the proper bits. 

My SOP is to do my art work in GiMP and then export as a bmp file. THEN I open that bmp file in free Paint.NET and immediately save again and it always works. Ridiculous but it is what it is.

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1 hour ago, kohlenklau said:

Not sure if this is part of the issue...

I just remembered, GiMP has some stupid issue with not being able to export BMP files with the proper bits. 

My SOP is to do my art work in GiMP and then export as a bmp file. THEN I open that bmp file in free Paint.NET and immediately save again and it always works. Ridiculous but it is what it is.

Ahh yes. Ok, I did check, and the exterior of the icon was, indeed completely black. Not really surprising, since all I'd done was open the original icon file and change the colours. So yeh, I think it's GIMP issue.  

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20 minutes ago, Redwolf said:

I still think it would be useful to make the xcf file available so that we can have a look directly.

Done. It's a little rough, but I just opened the original icon file, filled in the mortar image and the gray background around it. At this point, any exporting creates a black square in the game rather than retaining the original triangle shape. 

icon german red mortar 1.xcf

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1 hour ago, RMM said:

Done. It's a little rough, but I just opened the original icon file, filled in the mortar image and the gray background around it. At this point, any exporting creates a black square in the game rather than retaining the original triangle shape. 

icon german red mortar 1.xcf 1.89 kB · 2 downloads

I always have that trouble. I hate working with masks, so I rarely do!

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Okay, so here is the thing. The regular GIMP bmp importer does not support transparency. Your problem is on the input, not the output. The file inside gimp has no transparency / alpha channel.

However, I found a workaround:

- convert the bmp file to a png file using ffmpeg

- import that png file into gimp. It has the proper transparency. See attached xcf file

l.xcf

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I use an old version of Gimp (2.6.7) as it seems to work fine for CM bmps and transparencies. Can be done as simply as SELECT> BY COLOUR, then COLOURS> COLOUR TO ALPHA. Then, and this is important in this version of Gimp, FILE> SAVE AS.. (name) and when prompted press SAVE, a box with Advanced Options tree should pop up and make sure 32 bits A8 R8 G8 B8 is the one checked, otherwise it may well not save as 32bit. This will automatically save as a transparent alpha channel. Just one more way of getting round inherent oddities with Gimp!

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/27/2021 at 10:57 AM, Redwolf said:

Okay, so here is the thing. The regular GIMP bmp importer does not support transparency. Your problem is on the input, not the output. The file inside gimp has no transparency / alpha channel.

However, I found a workaround:

- convert the bmp file to a png file using ffmpeg

- import that png file into gimp. It has the proper transparency. See attached xcf file

l.xcf 2.89 kB · 1 download

Sweet. Nice work and thank you. Good insight. Time to start editing again! 😅

Edited by RMM
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On 5/27/2021 at 10:57 AM, Redwolf said:

Okay, so here is the thing. The regular GIMP bmp importer does not support transparency. Your problem is on the input, not the output. The file inside gimp has no transparency / alpha channel.

However, I found a workaround:

- convert the bmp file to a png file using ffmpeg

- import that png file into gimp. It has the proper transparency. See attached xcf file

l.xcf 2.89 kB · 3 downloads

Soo, unfortunately, after I switched the colours around for SS (Black n white iso the grey and black, I now just get a black box in the game for the icon :(

Will keep experimenting and also check out @bill_sp 's suggestion too, but if you have any further insight...?

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On 5/27/2021 at 11:32 AM, billy_sp said:

I use an old version of Gimp (2.6.7) as it seems to work fine for CM bmps and transparencies. Can be done as simply as SELECT> BY COLOUR, then COLOURS> COLOUR TO ALPHA. Then, and this is important in this version of Gimp, FILE> SAVE AS.. (name) and when prompted press SAVE, a box with Advanced Options tree should pop up and make sure 32 bits A8 R8 G8 B8 is the one checked, otherwise it may well not save as 32bit. This will automatically save as a transparent alpha channel. Just one more way of getting round inherent oddities with Gimp!

So the only thing with this is that one still has to 'export as' to make it a .bmp, and that seems to be where the hang up continues - Now I'm getting a black box in the game instead of a black-n-white mortar triangle for SS :(

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On 5/25/2021 at 9:39 AM, IanL said:

LOL that's a great way of putting it.

I know people have figured out the settings for GIMP and Photoshop to save a BMP that will work in game but I never have. I got frustrated trying to get Photoshop to work and eventually just switched to the Greenfish editor: http://greenfishsoftware.org/gfie.php

It's default settings for Windows BMP files work for me in game.

Yup, finally got around to trying this out, and it was done immediately on the first try! Thank you for relieving my angst sir!

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